Venus' Owne Clerk: Chaucer's Debt to the Confessio Amantis (Costerus NS 167)

Venus’ Owne Clerk Chaucer’s Debt to the Confessio Amantis

COSTERUS NEW SERIES 167 Series Editors: C.C. Barfoot, Theo D’haen and Erik Kooper

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Venus’ Owne Clerk Chaucer’s Debt to the Confessio Amantis

B.W. Lindeboom

Amsterdam-New York, NY 2007

Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2150-1 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Printed in the Netherlands

Contents

Acknowledgement Introduction One

Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales

3

Two

Towards Composing a Testament of Love

45

Three

The Sergeant and Man of Law as Gower

123

Four

The Testament of Love

147

Five

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath

227

Six

The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin

295

Seven

The Wife of Bath’s Sermon

319

Eight

The Pardoner’s Double Sermon

395

Conclusion

437

Reference

461

Register

475

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Acknowledgement I should like to express my thanks to all those who have helped to bring this book to a successful end. My great debts of gratitude are to my wife Mieke as a modern-day Griselda, to Roderick J. Lyall, by whose guidance my theory has greatly benefited, to Jeremy J. Smith, who has been a pillar of support throughout, and to Erik Kooper, who has graciously helped me to prepare this study for wider publication. The cover of this book is based on a drawing by my daughter Edwina Lindeboom. Finally, I owe many thanks to my good nephew Harmen for all his computer-related assistance.

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Introduction If I were asked to define within the space of a single paragraph what this book is all about, my answer would be twofold. One part explores, often in great detail, the curious composition of the prologues and tales told by the Wife of Bath and Pardoner. Both go in for a confession that is not just a literary one but also of a religious nature, easily encompassing all the Seven Deadly Sins. This can be demonstrated at the hand of the Parson’s discussion of the subject. The correspondences do no stop here, as it is also demonstrable that, contrary to general opinion, the Wife and the Pardoner are each engaged in preaching a sermon that closely follows the rules of the so-called modern university type which was the standard form in Geoffrey Chaucer’s day. The other part seeks to pin down the reasons why Chaucer went in for such a tour de force, why these two characters, only peripherally linked in the Canterbury Tales as we know them, were selected for this and why, having produced these two clever and intricate nar-ratives, he then failed to put them to any special joint use. Frustratingly, it has proved impossible to deal with matters in the order that I have just presented them. So much is interconnected that this would involve an excess of forward reference and advance explanation. For this reason and to my regret, I have been obliged to turn things around and deal with the much trickier why and wherefore before tackling the easy part of demonstrating the confessional and homiletic aspects involved. It is something that my readers may bear in mind when turning the pages below, much of the credibility of my argument being based on what are now my four final chapters. At the centre of all my problems resides the incompleteness of the Canterbury Tales, a fact that registers only dimly with the majority of its readers. This is understandable, since the work has a very distinct beginning and an equally distinct ending and thus conveys a sense of completeness. Even among the experts the inclination to treat the Tales as a whole work is considerable and lies in wait at unexpected moments, when in fact the work is seriously incomplete. To further complicate matters, there is good evidence that at some time during the writing of the Canterbury Tales Chaucer radically altered his narrative design. The original idea, as outlined in the General

2 | Introduction

Prologue, was for an extensive work of estates satire in which each pilgrim was to tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and another two on the way home. This appears to have been replaced by a strictly linear pilgrimage, beginning in Southwark and ending in Canterbury. In the process, Chaucer reduced the tales to be told from four to one for every pilgrim and included the Parson’s Tale, thus adding a spiritual dimension. It is the chief aim of this study to unravel the causes which led Chaucer to go in for such a sweeping change. The change as such is easily demonstrated and has in fact been widely accepted, even if its exact contours appear to have escaped close investigation. What motivated it, however, has never been seriously addressed. It is my contention that the explanation lies in Gower’s Confessio Amantis whose 1390 version includes a brief address to Chaucer at its conclusion. Traditionally interpreted as an accolade, its seventeen lines are analysed here as a less accommodating invitation to a literary contest. In the chapters to come it is the outlines of this contest and its repercussions that I seek to trace. Hilversum, November 2006

1. Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales The Original Plan of the Canterbury Tales When Chaucer began work on the Canterbury Tales, the book that he seems to have had in mind was a vast volume of stories. The General Prologue, “generally put in or about 1387”,1 mentions in line 24 the figure of 29 pilgrims, to whom we must add Chaucer himself and the Host. Each of these is invited by the latter to join in a storytelling scheme. This scheme is drawn quite explicitly. Each pilgrim is to tell two tales on the outward journey and two more on the way home. The one who comes up with the tale “of best sentence and moost solaas”, in the Host’s judgement, will get a free meal upon the pilgrims’ return to Southwark: … ech of yow, to shorte with oure weye, In this viage shal telle tales tweye To Caunterbury-ward, I mene it so, And homward he shal tellen othere two, 1 F.N. Robinson, The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1933; London: OUP, 1957 2nd ed.), p 650. Larry D. Benson, The Riverside Chaucer (1987; Oxford etc: OUP, 1991 3rd ed), also includes 1388 as a possibility (p 798). N.F. Blake, on the other hand, not only avers that “the usual chronology suggests a date about 1385” (which rather misrepresents the true state of affairs) and even goes on to suggest, at p 51, that the “Canterbury Tales could have been embarked upon long before the accepted date of 1385”. The Textual Tradition of the Canterbury Tales (London/Victoria/Baltimore: Arnold, 1985). A different note has been sounded by Dolores Warwick Frese, An Ars Legendi for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Gainesville: U of Florida P, 1991), pp 90-193. On the basis of the correspondence of some of the tales, particularly the Pardoner’s and the Summoner’s, with their portraits in the General Prologue, she argues, within a wider argument in favour of 24 tales as the complete work and a body count of 29 pilgrims, that the General Prologue is Chaucer’s final piece of writing on the Canterbury Tales. As far as I can make out, this view stems from Charles A. Owen Jr, ‘The Alternative Reading of The Canterbury Tales’, PMLA 97 (1982): 237-50. Its unlikelihood is discussed later in this chapter. Nor is she accurate on the total number of pilgrims, which is claimed to range from 28 to 31, all well-suited to an astronomical reading whereby the pilgrims equal the number of days of the month. The actual number is 33, with the evidence indicating that this was one point on which Chaucer had not yet reached any definite decision.

4 | Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales Of aventures that whilom han bifalle. And which of yow that bereth hym best of alle That is to seyn, that telleth in this caas Tales of best sentence and moost solaas Shal have a soper at oure aller cost Heere in this place, sittynge by this post, Whan that we come agayn fro Caunterbury. [GenProl, 791/801]

This is the main idea, though the Host has his own particular contribution to make. He is made “oure governour” and “of oure tales juge and reportour”, while the pilgrims … wol reuled been at his devys In heigh and lough; and thus by oon assent We been acorded to his juggement. [GenProl, 816/18]

If it should be felt that the four-tale plan is merely the Host’s pet project and that the pilgrims themselves have something far simpler in mind, such as just a single tale each, the passages just cited make it abundantly clear that this is not the case. One wonders whether the Host was also meant to be manoeuvred into producing a tale at some moment, by the pilgrims’ general acclaim or some such device – surely a good Chaucerian twist – or, in his role of the company’s self-appointed judge, remain as exempt from any narrative obligations as he plainly considers himself to be. What this leaves us with is a basic plan for the originally conceived Canterbury Tales of about 30 pilgrims telling twice two tales each, seemingly promising us something in the order of 120 tales – a very ambitious plan indeed. To judge by most of the portraits that we find in the General Prologue, they were conceived in terms of estate satire in a scheme whereby each pilgrim is given a role in highlighting some particular foible associated with his or her station in society.2 Naturally, we ought to be glad at Chaucer’s outline of this design. It is not every author who provides such insights in the way he intends to go about his business. The snag is that, beyond the evident fact of a substantial set of pilgrim-narrators, the Canterbury Tales as they have come down to us hardly reflect this scheme. 2

This subject is covered extensively by Jill Mann’s Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1973).

Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales | 5

A Change of Heart and a New Plan The Canterbury Tales that we are familiar with constitutes not even a fifth of what Chaucer promises us in the General Prologue. Only 23 pilgrims tell a tale and sometimes not even that much, as in the Squire’s and Cook’s cases. None of them get to narrate more than one.3 At the time of his death Chaucer evidently left an unfinished work, as attested, among other things, by the absentee tales and “the apparent fact that he left behind all sorts of incomplete changes and passages requiring revision”.4 Actually, as has been editorially recognized ever since the time of his death, the evidence points to a major change of conception. The situation is nicely illustrated by the following test. Suppose the Canterbury Tales had come down to us with lines 790/801 of the General Prologue missing, which is where he describes his narrative design, what would we assume his plan for them to have been? The answer is obvious. The Canterbury Tales which this leaves us are structured along these simple lines: 1) each pilgrim tells one tale only 2) journey’s end is at Canterbury 3) the Parson’s Tale adds a spiritual dimension The first consideration is self-evident. This is the way the actual work is constructed. It is not only what anyone can see for themselves but also a deduction to be drawn straight from the prologue to what is undeniably the final tale – the Parson’s Tale. Or so we judge it to be in the light of what Chaucer postscripted to it: “Heere is ended the book of the tales of Caunterbury, compiled by Geffrey Chaucer, of whose soule Jhesu Crist have mercy. Amen”.5 This basically reiterates 3

Benson, p 796. The objection that comes to mind, of course, is Chaucer the pilgrim with his Sir Thopas and his subsequent telling of the Melibee. This, however, cannot be taken as a case of someone telling two tales in terms of the original arrangement. 4 Benson, p 796. 5 Modern scholarship is largely satisfied that the Retraction is authentic (Benson, p 965). As Benson adds (p 955), “there is no question that [the] three component parts [of Fragment X], the Parson’s Prologue, Parson’s Tale, and the Retraction are firmly linked together by speaker and repeated theme [...]. Nor is there any doubt that the fragment was intended as the final section of the Tales, a position it indeed holds in all the manuscripts. The length, prose form, dullness, and somber tone of The Parson’s Tale, leading to a statement of authorial remorse and the retraction of what gener-

6 | Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales

what the Host says in the Parson’s Prologue. There is just one more tale to be told and then his part will be over, as he makes clear in the lines below: Now lakketh us no tales mo than oon. Fulfilled is my sentence and my decree; I trowe that we han herd of ech degree; Almoost fulfild is al myn ordinaunce. [ParsProl, 16/19]

The words he now addresses to the Parson are well worth noting: “Sire preest,” quod he, “artow a vicary? Or arte a person? Sey sooth, by thy fey! Be what thou be, ne breke thou nat oure pley; For every man, save thou, hath toold his tale”. [ParsProl, 22/25]

This is all very clear. There can be no doubt: every man (or woman, for that matter) has told his tale – singular. The very phrasing of the Host’s invitation here is significant. No one has been telling more than a single tale and there is not the faintest whiff of anything further to be told but the Parson’s present tale and when that is done the Host’s ordinaunce, the assignment that he has set himself and the pilgrims, will have been fulfilled. The notion of a single tale also fits the Parson. This final tale of his is plainly the first that he gets to tell. This is also the inference to be drawn from the total ignorance about him that the Host displays here. This Parson is an unknown factor, and this again is borne out by his Tale, which reveals him to be the very sort of spoil-sport the Host has been hoping he is not. He certainly has not been telling any earlier tales.6 ations of readers have experienced as the best of Chaucer’s poetry, all pose the most serious questions about the relation of Fragment X to the preceding tales, its function in the Tales, and the unity of the entire poem. The view that the Parson’s is only accidentally the last tale in an unfinished work cannot be seriously held in light of the carefully crafted Parson’s Prologue, with its repeated stress that The Parson’s Tale is to be the last on the fictional pilgrimage and with its seemingly deliberate use of verbal echoes and of literary motifs”. A similar position is taken by Rodney Delasanta, ‘Penance and Poetry in the Canterbury Tales’, PMLA 93 (1978): 240-47, who sees the Parson’s Tale as a well-fitting and intentional ending of the Canterbury Tales, not to be taken ironically, which agrees well with the pattern of penitential and eschatological allusion that we come across throughout the Tales. ‘Penance and Poetry in the Canterbury Tales’, PMLA 93 (1978): 240-47 6 The Parson’s Prologue here provides a good illustration of Chaucer changing his

Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales | 7

Also, as Helen Phillips points out, the pilgrims’ approach to Canterbury at the end of the day carries a distinct sense of closure, as do the “verbal suggestions of approaching mortality”: the end of the day, the speaker’s “shadwe” (X,7), entry into the “ende” of a village (X,11), and the end of the Canterbury journey and its story-telling.7 This means two things. One is that Chaucer reduced his plan of four tales per pilgrim to just one. Every pilgrim tells a single tale, the Parson being the last to do so at journey’s end. The other thing the Host’s words mean, without a shadow of doubt, is that, with just one last tale – the Parson’s – requiring his “sentence” and his “decree” and his “ordinaunce” (all easily associated with a last judgement in the biblical sense and with confession as a reflection of this), it is indeed journey’s end that they have all come to. So what we must decide on is whether this is Southwark, as per original agreement, or Canterbury. Naturally, this is not a question that has gone unrecognized.8 As Robinson says, noncommittally, “Whatever tales were still to be written, Chaucer apparently intended the Parson’s to be either the last on the journey to Canterbury, or the last on the return to Southwark”.9 Unlike the question of how many tales each pilgrim tells, whereby the Host’s final words leave little doubt on the matter, there is no clear statement about the exact venue of journey’s end. Still, the reduction of tales from four to one is a substantial clue. Any decision on Chaucer’s part to scrap the return journey would have automatically resulted in a halving of tales. This would account for two out of every three tales that are wanting for every pilgrim and may indeed mind on the Parson’s role in the Canterbury Tales, since in the Man of Law’s Epilogue – a piece of good Chaucerian quality, but of uncertain status and in clear need of revision (Robinson, p 696) or cancellation (Robinson, p 6) – the Host, upon being lectured about his swearing, shows himself well able to deduce what sort of person he is talking to. Here he has no idea what sort of man he is dealing with. 7 Helen Phillips, An Introduction to the Canterbury Tales: Reading, Fiction, Context (Basingstoke, London: Macmillan, 2000), pp 219-20. 8 I rather like Elizabeth A. Dobbs’ article on this, arguing that the legalistic terms of the Host’s contract with the pilgrims, which ironically show him up as a most astute businessman, preclude the possibility of an ending at Canterbury (Literary, Legal, and Last Judgments in The Canterbury Tales’, SAC 17 (1995): 31-52). What she overlooks, besides the simple fact that contracts can be broken, is that the entire Parson’s Prologue and other evidence make it plain that the original design was abandoned in due course. 9 Robinson, p 765; Benson, p 796. A contrary view is found in Owen, ‘Alternative Reading’: 237. See also note 1 and below.

8 | Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales

have been the impetus for the further scrapping of all second tales on the remaining outward leg of the journey. Furthermore, even if an explicit statement is lacking, where else can we be but Canterbury when the Parson announces: I wol yow telle a myrie tale in prose To knytte up al this feeste and make an ende. And Jhesu, for his grace, wit me sende To shewe yow the wey, in this viage, Of thilke parfit glorious pilgrymage That highte Jerusalem celestial. [ParsProl, 46/51]

Clearly, as Ralph Baldwin pointed out half a century ago,10 he is thinking of pilgrimage to Canterbury as a reflection of Jerusalem celestial or, conversely, of Jerusalem celestial as a glorious version of Canterbury. This view has become a commonly accepted one and it is often assumed, without further argument, that the pilgrims are indeed drawing near to Canterbury.11 This is quite logical. The Parson is not talking about inglorious Southwark, a medieval den of iniquity and London’s red-light district, and in biblical terms easily equated to the city of Babylon, holy Jerusalem’s antipole. The appropriateness of the Parson’s Tale is best understood when we take it as the final touchstone for all, pilgrims and tales alike, in a religious context whereby Canterbury approximates their heavenly destination. It is a moralitas that is fittingly applied to the totality of the Canterbury Tales in their Easter context of redemption through Christ’s passion and resurrection, as channelled through every Christian’s annual duty of confession at this time. The Parson’s words about knitting up “al this feeste” imply the same thing. Chaucer’s pilgrims are a quarrelsome lot but now that they are entering Canterbury the time has come to put an end to their disputes. True, the pilgrims’ squabbling looks like a reflection of Chaucer’s own unmistakable liking for retaliation as a narrative de10

Ralph Baldwin, ‘The Unity of the Canterbury Tales’, in Schoeck & Taylor: 14-51, at 39-41. 11 Among others, Rodney Delasanta, Penance & Poetry. His discussion of how the pilgrims’ approach of Canterbury is set to an eschatological theme of penance and redemption is fully in line with my own view. For an opposing view, cf Charles A. Owen Jr. Pilgrimage and Storytelling in the“Canterbury Tales”: The Dialectic of ‘Ernest’ and ‘Game’ (Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1977).

Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales | 9

vice and perhaps also as something of a literary signature. Yet here at this place and time the Parson, in referring to “feeste”, “glorious pilgrimage” and “Jerusalem celestial”, is evidently anticipating his subsequent description of Heaven as “ther as is the blisful compaignye that rejoysen hem everemo, everich of others joye”[1077]. Something very much like this line must have been in Chaucer’s mind when he undertook to paint his “compaignye” as largely rooted in the here-andnow and falling all over themselves to get entangled in petty quarrels, yet caused them end up in Canterbury on a more elevated note. Assuming the day of their arrival to be the Thursday before Easter,12 sometimes known as Maundy Thursday, what moment could be more appropriate than the beginning of “God’s Truce” in the Easter days when from Thursday evening to Monday morning all private feuding was forbidden on pain of excommunication? The presence of the Parson’s Tale at the end is no accident, nor is its appropriateness. It has already been referred to it as the final touchstone of the Canterbury Tales and that is exactly what it is. As a sermon on penitence and a treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins and their remedies it represents salvation, grace, redemption. It is the yardstick whereby the entire Canterbury fellowship is meant to be measured, the mirror held up to each and every pilgrim as well as the readers and listeners who accompanied them in their minds. This is why Chaucer emphasizes that the “myrie tale” (a bit of dark humour, considering the ominous and ponderous nature of the tale, or a clerical pun on the joys of heaven?) is to be told for the sake of “the sentence”, thus reiterating the pilgrims’ desire “to enden in som vertuous sentence”. This is well-suited to the occasion, as we are speaking of Easter with its annual obligation of taking confession. But there is more. Careful readers cannot fail to be reminded here of the original terms of the entire storytelling enterprise, which was to award the laurels to the one who came up with the “best sentence” and “moost solaas”. The Parson’s Tale provides exactly this, even though its “solaas” or consolation is something other than the sense in which the Host uses the word. Morally and spiritually, it is the pilgrimage’s winner and it is an 12

The Canterbury pilgrims are on a Lent pilgrimage, in the days just before Easter. It is a plausible thought, therefore, that they must be read as intending to combine their annual duty of confession at Easter (whence, on one level, the Parson’s Tale) with a visit to St Thomas’ shrine. Chaucer would have been thinking here of them as heading towards all the important religious celebrations from Good Friday onward.

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attractive thought, in the light of the echoes of the original enterprise, that Chaucer may still have adhered to his idea of a winner’s “soper” at the time of writing the Parson’s Prologue, this time as a reflection of Christ’s Last Supper, and had the Parson in mind as the victor who would doubtless have opted for a wafer and a glass of wine. What Chaucer means by the Host’s reference to “sentence” is not hard to see, particularly in the light of the Parson's sermon to follow: sententia, the exegetical meaning of things or, if one wishes, what things come down to in terms of sin and redemption. This explains what the Parson’s Tale is for. It stands at the end of the Canterbury Tales as an eschatological key to all that has come before. Or, as Baldwin has it, Canterbury approximates the celestial city and the Parson’s Tale provides the unifying factor of the Canterbury Tales as “implicitly it recapitulates and musters into dramatic unity all the silent symmetries of the other tales and the viage as such”. This is because “each pilgrim and his [sic] story combine with the Parson’s homily to make a momentary – and moving – diptych, a story and a gloss, action and passion. This confers a sense of completeness which such episodic fictions often lack”.13 Derek Pearsall calls it Chaucer’s “groundplan of salvation”.14 Thus, this study’s position is an instance of what David Lawton calls the “absolute” approach, a definition that is taken from Lee Patterson15: “(1) the moral absolutism of the Par13 Baldwin, Schoeck & Taylor: 39-41. I realize that the present interpretation, seconded by such students of patristic influences as Robert P. Miller, is not welcome in some sections of Chaucer criticism. Siegfried Wenzel, who gives a summary of the criticism on the Parson’s Tale, rejects it as a yardstick to judge the other tales by, in ‘Every Tales Strengthe’, Europäische Lehrdichtung, Festschrift für Walter Naumann zum 70. Gebürtstag, eds Hans Gerd Rotzer and Herbert Waltz (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981): 86-98. A similar view is found with Lee Patterson, ‘The Parson’s Tale and the Quitting of the Canterbury Tales’, Traditio 34 (1978): 331-80; Jerry Root, ‘“Space to Speke”: The Wife of Bath and the Discourse of Confession’, ChauR 28 (1994): 253-74, at 269 note 6; and Beverly Boyd, Chaucer and the Liturgy (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1967), arguing that, though familiar with sacramental and canonical liturgies, Chaucer is essentially uninterested in either. 14 Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), p 269. 15 David Lawton, ‘ Chaucer’s Two Ways: The Pilgrimage Frame of The Canterbury Tales’, SAC 9 (1987): 3-40, at 4. Such a reading runs counter to Lawton’s preferred alternative of attributing the placement of the Parson’s Tale at the end of the Tales to a compiler who is not Chaucer. However, the matter is more or less resolved in favour of the “absolute” reading when at the end of his article he considers that “the religious nature of pilgrimage is conspicuously begged in The General Prologue and cries out for a penitential correction” (36) and concludes a few pages later (40) that the “com-

Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales | 11

son’s Tale has been implicit throughout the tales, guiding our judgment as we read them and now receiving its full expression and authority; (2) the Parson’s Tale provides a retrospective commentary on all that has gone before, and our understanding of the tales should now (but only now) be revised in the direction of its moral judgment. Lawton presents these two as alternatives but they are in fact complementary, at least so far as this study is concerned. The presence of the Parson’s Tale suggests that every tale is, or was duly intended to be, an implicit vehicle for either virtue or vice. The insightful medieval person would have had little trouble in unravelling their spiritual message. For the unwary and the less discerning there was the Parson’s combined manual of confession and treatise on penitence as a deliberate marker. This notion finds its ultimate corroboration in the shape of Chaucer’s Retraction, which follows the Parson’s Tale and lists the works that Chaucer revokes as representing “worldly vanitees”. Even though at first sight the Retraction is a bit of a puzzle as to which of Chaucer’s personae is speaking – is this the author or perhaps the pilgrim or even a deathbed Chaucer? – it does represent a statement of contrition by one of the Canterbury participants and thus, implicitly, affirms the confessional import of the Parson’s Tale for all the company. As Pearsall puts it, “the Retraction, in which he begs forgiveness for and formally revokes all his ‘translacions and enditynges of worldly vanitees’, is Chaucer’s own historical response to the call for penitence, and penitence now, which is the imperative logic of the closing paragraphs of the Parson’s treatise. […] It is Chaucer’s own act of satisfaction”.16 Even more to the point, perhaps, is Larry Scanpiler’s reading is eminently persuasive. The compiler, I think, understood the text he had. […] Such a compiler need not have been Chaucer. In this case, however, he might just as well have been.” When one gets this far, why not go all the way and simply accept that Chaucer himself was the arranger? 16 Pearsall, p 269. The traditional view discerns a deathbed retraction: John M. Manly and Edith Rickert eds, The Text of the Canterbury Tales (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1940), vol.ii, pp 471-72. The innocent view is found with Donald R. Howard, who regards the Retraction as a genuine and personal expression of repentance: ‘Chaucer the Man’, PMLA 80 (1985): 337-43. The other possibilities are largely explored by Benson (p 965), who writes: “The alternatives to reading the Retraction as an expression of the poet’s personal remorse are: either to see it as an application to the poetnarrator of the Parson’s call to penitence, the concluding step in a poem on the theme of the pilgrimage of life [...] or to see it as Chaucer’s utilization of the retractio as a literary convention that includes establishing a canon of his authentic works”. I do not

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lon who points out that the Retraction is solely a literary device: “The autobiography Chaucer presents here is entirely textual. It consists not of his actions generally, but only of his writings. What is at stake, then, is not his sins, but his claim to auctoritas”.17 So, in a nutshell, what have we got? We have compelling evidence, both in writing and in the actual composition of the Tales, that in due course Chaucer threw out his original plan of four tales for each pilgrim in favour of a one-man one-tale scheme. In addition, it is obvious that within this new scheme Southwark was replaced by Canterbury as journey’s end and that the estates satire concept was at least partially modified. Together, this indicates that at some time during their composition the Canterbury Tales were aligned along more emphatically spiritual lines than the original plan. In its turn, this dimension is directly linked up with the presence of the Parson’s Prologue, the Parson’s Tale and Chaucer’s Retraction at the end of the Canterbury Tales, whose inclusion at a Southwark ending would be most inappropriate. In fact, it is the inclusion of these three that transforms the Tales from a compilation of pieces of estate satire into something superior, a spiritually unified whole. The Manuscript Evidence Since the nineteenth century, critics have pointed out aspects of this evident change of plan and there is general agreement that, give or take one or two Fragments shifted backward or forward, this is the best order that we can come up with, yet can never be sure of. We find ourselves in this situation because obviously, when Chaucer died in 1400, he left the Canterbury Tales in an unfinished and at least partially unrevised condition and possibly in a state of disarray. This holds good in particular for the General Prologue, which is both early believe that any “either/or” approach brings clarity here and regard the ambiguity of the Retraction as intentional. Perhaps it is worth noting here that Boccaccio also indicated that he “regretted having written and would willingly have destroyed” his Decamerone. Calvin S. Brown ed., The Reader’s Companion to World Literature (New York: Dryden, 1956). Also see Olive Sayce, ‘Chaucer’s Retractions: The Conclusion of the Canterbury Tales and Its Place in Literary Tradition’, MA 40 (1971): 230-48. She cites various similar constructions in French, German and Latin. For a discussion of Chaucer’s personae, cf Benson, p 798. 17 Larry Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, Power (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994), p 23.

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and late, in the sense that it appears to record his original conception of a huge work of estates satire but also must be understood to include later additions and occasional rewrites. As far we can judge, he left no final ordinatio for his tales, which is easily understandable given the many absentee tales, nor was there anything in the nature of a definitive revision. This, too, is understandable. Why revise when there is still so much to be added that may in its turn call for further revision? Thus, his early fifteenth-century editors were left to determine to the best of their ability what order, if any had at all been arrived at, Chaucer had had in mind. Ever since Tyrwhitt’s edition, the first to be based on any serious comparison of manuscripts, most editors have favoured the socalled Ellesmere order, a sequence as found in the Ellesmere MS, an elaborately prepared manuscript dating, we now think, on Kathleen Scott’s authority, from “in or just after 1400 and ending no later than 1405. Textually, however, another and earlier manuscript, Hengwrt, deemed by her to be “so early as the late 1390s” is adjudged to be closest to Chaucer’s original and may even have been prepared under Chaucer’s own guidance.18 If in the past decades the debate was in terms of Norman F. Blake vs Manly/Rickert on pre-view circulation of some of the tales, by way of explaining some of the differences between Hengwert and Ellesmere, this is one issue that has been temporarily laid to rest, more or less settled in Blake’s favour.19 Thanks to Linne Mooney’s identification of Chaucer’s Scribe B, who prepared both the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts, as Adam Pynkhurst, the one and only Adam Scriveyn whom he addresses satirically in one of his shorter poems but who appears to have been a favourite scribe nevertheless, we now have a strong suggestion of someone well-acquainted with Chaucer’s writings and possibly also with his plans for the Canterbury Tales.20 Certainly, the Ellesmere manuscript looks like the best that he or anyone else could have come up with. Where Hengwrt exhibits all the 18 Kathleen Scott, “An Hours and Psalter by Two Ellesmere Illuminators”, in: Woodward & Stevens, pp 187-121, at 106. Scott’s dates are, of course, informed guesses but cannot pinpoint anything with absolute precision. I am in Norman Blake’s debt for pointing out her paper and its implications. 19 Norman F. Blake, The Textual Tradition of the Canterbury Tales (London/Victoria/ Baltimore: Arnold , 1985). 20 Linne Mooney, in a presentation to the 14th Biennial Congress of the New Chaucer Society in Glasgow (July 2004); The Guardian, July 20 2004, p 3.

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signs of a makeshift production, the Ellesmere manuscript is the evident outcome of careful planning. The tale order, insofar as not indicated by the tales or links themselves, follows the internal clues that Chaucer inserted, wide margins were provided for glossing, the Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue and Tale are included and the manuscript’s links, almost complete, are in what we would be inclined to regard as the proper places.21 If, from our point of view or at least Manly/Rickert’s,22 some of the constituent manuscript choices that he made were inferior to those of Hengwrt, if only slightly so, such a verdict need not reflect medieval taste or even Chaucer’s. Alternatively, it may simply be that our scribe never went in for any such close comparative reading as Manly/Rickert and simply selected those quires that he took to be the most up-to-date ones. With the Ellesmere manuscript probably belonging to the first few years after Chaucer’s death, there is a good chance that the earlier Hengwrt stems from his own life-time. Rather problematically, however, Hengwrt is not complete (and never was) and its tale order is a mess. This makes it improbable that the manuscript was assembled under Chaucer’s own supervision. It is certainly clear that it was put together in something of a hurry, on sometimes inferior material, and with Pynkhurst rather uncertain about the occasional tale, such as the Cook’s (to which he added in a different pen, hence presumably at a later time, “Of this Cokes Tale maked Chaucer na moore”),23 and 21

Manly/Rickert, vol ii, p 479; Blake, p 55; Doyle & Parkes: 185-90; Ralph Hanna III, ‘(The) Editing (of) the Ellesmere Text’, in: Woodward & Stevens: 225-43, at 23132; and, of course, A.I. Doyle, ‘The Copyist of the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales’, in: Woodward & Stevens: 49-67, passim. Hanna provides an excellent overview here, even if he is somewhat vague on the “production teams” that he envisions for the early manuscripts. 22 Germaine Dempster, ‘Manly’s Conception of the Early History of the Canterbury Tales’,PMLA 64 (1949): 379-415, at 394-95. Here a note of caution may be inserted. With the passing of some six decades our manuscript knowledge of the Canterbury Tales has increased in an amazing fashion and it seems to me that the time is nigh for some brave team of Chaucer scholars to come up with a thorough reassessment of Manly/Rickert’s work. 23 Blake, p 61ff, p 84 (recap); Ralph Hanna III, Pursuing History: Middle English Manuscripts and Their Texts (Stanford CA: Stanford UP, 1996), p 142ff. As for the Hengwrt scribe’s comment on the Cook’s Tale, Chaucer scholarship has on the whole seen fit to follow his lead. There are of course several possibilities here, briefly discussed by Benson (p 853). John H. Fisher, no mean voice, suggests that Chaucer broke off the tale because Gower was unhappy with it (Fisher, p 207).

Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales | 15

missing out on the Canon Yeoman’s altogether as well as the Nun’s Priest’s Epilogue.24 The hurry itself could be related to Chaucer’s condition, the master at death’s door desiring to leave as complete a Canterbury Tales as possible but not being able to instruct his scribe in any clear fashion, but just as well – and financially more likely25 – to some patron wishing to preserve this wonderful collection of tales before it was lost forever. An attendant consideration is that the hurry may have been related to the repressive character of Henry IV’s new regime, in particular its intolerance of religious criticism and the use of English in all sort religious writings. Much of what Chaucer had written for the Canterbury Tales may have become risky overnight, if not on the count of heresy then at least because it would have been seen as lacking in a proper respect for the authority of the Church and its orders.26 So what if Chaucer’s Canterbury writings were bundled together quickly and stowed away in one or more safe places – preferably more, in order to spread the risk of confiscation or being mislaid? That this is not such a far-fetched scenario may be seen in the condition of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts. In the case of Hengwrt some leaves were gnawed by rats before they were bound, in that of Ellesmere some of the illustrations were altered, the most interesting of which is the Knight’s. The sleeve of his dress was painted over, in conformity with the fashion of 1407.27 In either case, the explanation may be that the manuscripts had been laid up for a considerable time before being put in circulation. The scribe’s uncertainty about the Cook’s Tale is an interesting point. In Hengwrt the Cook’s Tale and Pynkhurst’s postscript about its unfinished condition are followed by a partially blank page, attesting, 24 Blake, pp 58-64; Hanna, ch 9 passim; A.I. Doyle and M.B. Parkes, ‘The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century’, in: M.B.Parkes and Andrew G. Watson eds, Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R. Ker (London: Scolar, 1978): 163-210, at 186. 25 If we take his Complaint unto His Purse literally, together with what the records tell us about the slow pace at which grants and back payments reached him, he was in considerable money trouble. This agrees well with the meagre material quality of the Hengwrt manuscript but would have put the production of such a de luxe MS as Ellesmere beyond contemplation. 26 Terry Jones, Robert Yeager, Terry Dolan, Alan Fletcher, Juliette Dor, Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery (London: Methuen, 2003), pp 137ff. 27 Jones, pp 247-53, 274-75.

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as Blake points out, to the scribe’s initial expectation of the rest to turn up.28 Elsewhere in the manuscript similar spaces were left open and filled in later, but not so in the Cook’s case. Blake suggests (though he might retract this now, in the light of these new developments) that the rest of the Cook’s Tale was actually written but went missing somehow. My own guess is rather that Pynkhurst did not truly come into his own as Chaucer’s scribe until the 1390s, which would mean that the early Fragment I and its abrupt ending may have been something that he was not familiar with as a copyist and left him in a bit of a quandary. What this leaves unaddressed is what spurred his remark about the Cook’s Tale. Was it added after consulting Chaucer in his final days or the result of a posthumous search among his papers? In the light of Pynkhurst’s phrasing (past tense instead of present perfect) the latter option seems the likelier one. It is certainly not something that he could have included if he had been working here under Chaucer’s personal supervision, in which case it would surely have been thrown out altogether. Another point is the status of Gamelyn and the Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue and Tale. Gamelyn crops up in some twenty-odd manuscripts but is clearly not by Chaucer. So far as I can judge, however, scholarly opinion is in favour of assuming its manuscript to have been among Chaucer’s Nachlass, duly awaiting a rewriting and inclusion in the Canterbury effort that never took place. It is certainly wellsuited as a tale dealing with Deadly Sin, with its theme of premeditated vengeance. How it got into currency in so many manuscripts while absent in Hengwrt and Ellesmere and clearly not edited by Chaucer in any way is less easily explained. BL MS Harley 7334, one of the early manuscripts and perhaps like others also earlier than has been supposed so far (1410), includes it to disguise the fragmentary nature of the Cook’s Tale. Harley’s scribe D, as he is so far known, also applied (independently, one should think) Pynkhurst’s tactic of leaving blank spaces to deal with missing parts turning up.29 28 Blake, pp 58-64; Hanna, ch 9 passim; A.I. Doyle and M.B. Parkes, ‘The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century’, in: M.B.Parkes and Andrew G. Watson eds, Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N.R. Ker (London: Scolar, 1978): 163-210, at 186. Also, M.B. Parkes, ‘The Planning and Construction of the Ellesmere Manuscript’, in: Woodward & Stevens, 41-47, passim; Doyle & Parkes: 185-91. 29 John M. Bowers, Two Professional Readers of Chaucer and Langland, SAC 26 (2004): 113-146, at 122-24.

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This practice suggests not only an early assemblage date but also an awareness on the scribes’/arrangers’ part of some sort of manuscript dispersal. This indicates that Blake’s rejection of preview circulation may be too absolute. Perhaps there was the occasionale tale, one or two, that was in other people’s hands, for such presumable purposes as readership response. However, this would imply a surrendering of unique manuscripts, as in the Canon Yeoman’s case below, that is difficult to countenance. A better way to deal with the problem may be by assuming Chaucer’s literary estate to have been housed in a variety of places, as I have suggested before. There was at least a deputy forestership that he held in the ’nineties and this may well have involved a lodge or such where he would have spent some of his time writing and kept a number of manuscripts. There may have been further places for him to write in peace and quiet and store his papers, such as some of John of Gaunt’s demesnes. Or his manuscripts may have gone underground in several locations for a large part of Henry IV’s reign, in order to prevent their confiscation or even destruction. At any rate, one is irresistibly reminded of his pen friend Deschamps, whose poetic legacy was retrieved from as many as four main locations and even then later added unto from further sources. Such a dispersal is made the more likely by the Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue and Tale, absent in Hengwrt but all there in Ellesmere. What with Pynkhurst’s implicit authorization of it by dint of its inclusion there, we can only conclude that it was either mislaid or retrieved from some place that was out of reach at the time when Hengwrt was put together. Either possibility suffices and plausibly accounts for the matter at hand, without any need of recourse to Manly/ Rickert’s notion of preview circulation. Worth noting here, by the way, is Blake’s rejection of the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale as being uninspired verse possibly produced by a Chaucer imitator. Apart from the sheer genius of the Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue allowing the flow of tales to be interrupted by the arrival of two late-comers, which surely is Chaucer at his inventive best, the suggestion that the tale to follow is an imitation is a self-defeating one. By analogy, since there are enough places in the Canterbury Tales that are equally mediocre, he might as well call into question the authenticity of the entire work. On the whole, it looks unlikely that the Hengwrt and Ellesmere arrangements were ultimately suggested by Chaucer himself during

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his lifetime. Hengwrt is certainly too untidy to represent Chaucer’s final wishes for the Tales, whereas Ellesmere has the earmarks of a carefully prepared posthumous homage. Thus, I am inclined to think that both manuscripts postdate Chaucer’s death or were at least prepared without his personal supervision. This is further related to the fact that, unlike Manly/Rickert, I am unconvinced that no ordinatio was indicated. Chaucer may well have left instructions, while alternatively his filing system for his tales and/or quires may have been reasonably clear on the order which he had in mind. A complication may have been, as I have said, the chance that Chaucer’s copies were stored at more than one location and that this caused considerable confusion as to the exact number of tales produced by him and, whenever there was more than one copy of the same tale, to the superiority of one over another. Fifteenth-Century Editors and the New Plan Though the editorial art of inclusion and exclusion is a matter of due importance to what this study is all about with respect to the Canterbury Tales, our present interest resides chiefly in its tale order. A point that ought to strike us is that our modern sequence of tales does not differ substantially from early fifteenth-century attempts at establishing a “best order” Canterbury Tales.30 From the first efforts at arranging the Tales its editors seem to have felt that there was no authoritative tale order, which may reflect a tradition that all arrangements are unauthorized ones and stem from after his death, and evidently decided that the vital clues to Chaucer’s intended arrangement lay in its head-body-tail distribution. As we have seen, the various tales were generally transmitted in com-binations of one or more quires usually containing two or more tales. Such codicological combinations are referred to as booklets or fascicles (meaning small bundles) and are composed of a certain number of leaves folded through the middle and sewn together. They are also known as quires. Some of these we practically always find in fixed combinations with others, for which the editorial term is Fragments or Groups. They are stable groupings that go back to the earliest known manuscripts. Such modern editions as the Riverside Chaucer, 30

For a good overview of this, see Helen Cooper, ‘The Order of the Tales in the Ellesmere Manuscript’, in: Woodward & Stevens: 245-61.

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for instance, distinguish ten such blocks. Because they have not all shown themselves to be equally stable in the course of their transmission, there is some argument as to their exact original number. There may have been as few as eight of them or as many as fourteen to begin with, as Skeat believed.31 There is an unmistakable beginning in the shape of the General Prologue. This belongs to a very stable block of tales including the Knight’s Tale, the Miller’s Tale, the Reeve’s Tale and the abortive Cook’s Tale. Then there is a considerable body of intermediate tales permitting a rough ordering on the basis of quires, links and internal indications, and a very definitive concluding block in the shape of the Parson’s Tale whose final standing is underscored by both its Prologue and the subsequent Retraction. Hengwrt and Ellesmere already exhibit this unidirectional ordering, the Retraction having gone missing in Hengwrt, probably because it was worn to pieces, as happened in so many of the other manuscripts as well. Clearly there must have been a major editorial decision involved here for the early arrangers. Which represents the authoritative voice – the General Prologue or the Parson? The internal contradiction as such would not have been cause for any great worry. The Canterbury Tales are full of places containing evident authorial afterthoughts and instances of recognizably insufficient revision. Nor would Chaucer’s “announcement” of the revised plan in the second best place rather than the General Prologue itself have been a problem. It could have been considered due to any of a number of reasons, as we have seen. The persistent acceptance of the finality of the Parson’s Tale must largely be attributed to a recognition on the part of the arrangers (whether scribe, editor or commissioning party) of the implications of the Parson’s Prologue and perhaps even more of what Chaucer’s affixation of his Retraction in this place stands for. With its double finality, as his last word on the Canterbury Tales and literary testament at the same time – his last will – how can or could anybody mistake the conclusiveness of at least this part of the Canterbury Tales? It is the closest that we can come to any definitive statement and, as such, a major consideration for anyone desiring to arrange the tales into something approaching consistency. 31

For the eight groups, cf Helen Cooper, ‘Order’: 253; for the fourteen, cf Blake, p 29. Blake himself favours twelve (pp 45-46).

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There were, plainly, further good reasons why the Parson carried the day. Coming at the conclusion of the Canterbury Tales, his tale may have been regarded as the later piece of writing. The Retraction, which is so closely associated with it, has been traditionally viewed as a deathbed addition.32 The contents of the Parson’s Tale as a manifestly authoritative pronouncement on the human condition may have contributed their share, especially if the Canterbury Tales were seen as a movement away from frivolity and toward final things. This links up well with the greater religious slant of the Tales that is discernible in the second block of tales following upon the General Prologue and its immediately associated tales. Such added religiosity goes together well with the spiritual emphasis of the Parson’s Tale. If the Tales open on a worldly footing, well in tune with an estates satire set-up, much less so those that come directly after the first block, like the Man of Law, the Wife of Bath (where appearances are decidedly deceptive) and the tales discussing marriage which she sets into motion. An awareness of this is seen in the extensive marginal glossing, practically all of a theological nature, that we find with both the Man of Law and the Wife.33 The choice must further have been facilitated by the various indications in the links and other passages as to time, place and sequence, which suggested to the arrangers a one-way order of tales. It is unmistakable that they were so used by the early arrangers and understandably so, for they are an obvious and useful handle: these are the Fragments or Groups that we distinguish to this very day. Yet, as Manly/Rickert point out, there are inconsistencies in the resulting travelling scheme. They feel that Chaucer may “not have considered carefully whether [his] allusions [to time] would fit into his general plan or would harmonize with one another” and that “there is no evidence that he was so literal-minded as to attempt to harmonize the amount of story-telling with the distances travelled”.34 It is something that I have some trouble with: surely Chaucer’s combination of topographical and astronomical references may be taken to point in exactly the opposite direction. 32

Manly/Rickert, vol ii, pp 471-72. The Man of Law’s Tale and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue are two of the most heavily glossed parts of the Canterbury Tales in terms of religious comment: Owen, ‘Alternative Reading’: 238 ff.; Graham D. Caie, ‘The Significance of the Early Manuscript Glosses’, ChauR 10 (1975-76): 350-360, at 355. 34 Manly/Rickert, vol. ii, p 491. 33

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All the same, let us keep in mind that the unidirectional reference to time and place, as a reflection of Chaucer’s ultimate Canterbury Tales, remains a flawed effort whose inconsistencies we must probably attribute to his untimely death. We cannot know what he might have inserted by way of tales and links nor what he might have altered and excluded if he had had a chance of a truly final revision. The Tales that we know are a construct linking together parts of a seriously incomplete work. Thus, there is always a chance that some of the topographical and astronomical references preserved in them were originally intended for the return journey and remain, as it were, frozen in their unrevised status, and have consequently always been interpreted incorrectly. Four, Three, Two, One Besides the evidence of the Parson’s Prologue and Tale and the Retraction, there are two considerations which markedly tip the balance in favour of the outward journey and may have helped to make up the early editors’minds. One is that the elimination of the return journey would have reduced the originally announced number of tales per pilgrim from four to two. This requirement is fully complied with. No one tells a third or fourth tale. The other is that, in point of fact, no one even tells a second tale so that we must suppose that Chaucer simply switched to a one-way one-tale system. This is not to say that there are no echoes of the old scheme around. There are a few instances serving to remind us of the original obligation of two tales for each leg of the journey, which probably indicate a lack of careful redaction or, less likely, a temporarily entertained but never effectuated option of a two-tale scheme. What we are talking about here are: the Manciple’s Prologue, the Wordes of the Hoost to the Frankeleyn at the end of the Squire’s Tale, the Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue and Sir Thopas. In the Manciple’s Prologue the two tales are just a matter of inference. The hungover Cook is given to understand by the Host that it is his turn for a new tale, in evident disregard of his earlier one, and is graciously rescued by the Manciple. This is not a clear-cut case, obviously, and could be attributed to the Host’s own hung-over state, with the Manciple’s intervention serving as a subtle reminder that a single tale is sufficient, or to the possibility – on the assumption that its incomplete

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state lies with Chaucer – that the original Cook’s Tale was meant to be cancelled. The Franklin’s case and that of the Canon’s Yeoman hinge upon the Host’s words to them: “a tale or two” [SqT, 698] and “a myrie tale or tweye” [CYP, 597].35 Neither is transparent and there is a good chance that we are just dealing with stock formulaic metrical fillers here. Finally there is Chaucer himself with his Sir Thopas, but he clearly does not count: he does not get to tell two tales, he is mockhumiliatingly obliged to start anew. This leads us back to the one-way one-tale distribution that we are familiar with. Clearly, this is not a matter of chance. Not only does the Parson implicitly inform us so, but there is mathematical corroboration. Within a four-tale-per-pilgrim scheme the odds against any accidental single-tale configuration must be accounted very high. There ought to have been the incidental narrator with two, three or even four tales if the old plan was still operative or just two for a design limited to the outward journey only. Yet on a basis of a random distribution from zero to four, the odds compute as 0,000053254 or, more simply, about 1 in 20,000 for the one-tale situation to be due to chance.36 35 Benson (p 796) disregards the phrase “a myrie tale or tweye” in the Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue and writes that “by the time of the Parson’s Prologue another polgrim has been added, the Canon’s Yeoman, and the plan now calls for but one tale each”. The absence of the Canon’s Yeoman from the General Prologue is often taken to mean that he is an afterthought. Strictly speaking this is a bit of illogic. The fashion in which he is made to join the fellowship – overtaking them while they are already well under way – precludes any writing up in the General Prologue. Moreover, his description of his master’s superior powers is in itself suggestive of a late inclusion, as he not only implies that Canterbury is journey’s end but also conveys a suggestion of its equalling world’s end, with a hint even of the New Jerusalem to come, all well in keeping with the new plan: … al this ground on which we been ridyng, Til that we come to Caunterbury toun, He koude al clene turne it up-so-down, And pave it al of silver and of gold. [CYP, 623-26] 36 The computation for this runs as follows. Assume 30 narrators, each telling 4 tales = 120 tales. On a basis of 23 actual tales, what is the chance that they represent a random distribution among the various narrators? Imagine a pile of 120 tales from which we take a random sample of 23 tales. On this basis we compute the odds in favour of all 23 belonging to different narrators. Tale 1 is no problem: its chance is 1 = 120/ 120. There are now 119 tales left, 116 of which belong to other narrators. Hence, the chance that the second tale that we pick belongs to a different narrator is 116/119. Once this is done, there are 118 tales left, 112 of which cannot belong to narrators One or Two. So the chance that we draw a new narrator is 112/118. This sequence continues with 108/117, 104/116 etc. until we arrive at 32/98. The denomin-

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To clinch matters, there is the telling fact that in cases where Chaucer did come up with another tale, which appears to have happened with the Man of Law and the Wife of Bath, he consistently reassigned the original tale to another pilgrim, even if this was wellsuited to the original narrator and meant a hopeless fit on the other side (Shipman). Within a four-tale system, or even a two-tale one, any such reassignation of a well-fitting tale is incomprehensible. Instead, it suggests an underlying methodology affirming that Chaucer was indeed thinking in terms of a single tale for each pilgrim. To be fair, let us note that Blake rejects the attribution of the Shipman’s Tale to an earlier stage when it was the Wife of Bath’s. He dismisses, rather summarily, the much-quoted passage about husbands and wives early in the tale whose best-known part reads: The sely housbonde, algate he moot paye, He moot us clothe, and he moot us arraye, Al for his owene worshipe richely, In which array we daunce jolily. [Shipman’s Tale, 11-14]

Blake sees this as “a rhetorical dramatization of a set situation”.37 It “happens to be put into the Shipman’s mouth, but has no bearing on the gender of the narrator. The hypothesis that this tale was intended for the Wife of Bath lacks firm support and may be discounted”. But in fact that the heroine of the Shipman’s Tale is altogether reminiscent of the Wife of Bath: she speaks just like her, swears just like her and acts just like her, in much the same way that the Loathly Lady of the Wife of Bath’s Tale figures as a persona of the Wife. Also, he conveniently forgets that the Epilogue to the Man of Law’s Tale figures the same gender switch, this time impossible to mistake for a rhetorical dramatization of a set situation, when the Shipman speaks of “my joly body”, a phrase that is repeated in the Shipman’s Tale in a purely feminine setting.38 Blake also disregards the fact that the Epilogue Shipman is an editorial construct and his presence not in any way supported by the manuscript evidence. ators of the fractions 120, 119, 118, … 98 result in exactly 23 numbers (take care: 120 minus 98 equals 22, but these 22 are the intervals). Now multiply all these fractions: 120/120 x 116/119 x 112/118 x 108/117…x 40/100 x 36/99 x 32/98 = 0.00053254 or approximately 1: 20,000. 37 Blake, p 49. 38 Shipman’s Tale, line 423. Also cf Benson, pp 910-11 and notes 4-19.

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What moved Chaucer to go in for all this is a matter for later consideration. The question that concerns us here is the radical switch from four to one. Accepting that for a variety of reasons Chaucer had a change of heart on the composition of the Canterbury Tales, why is it that we find the obvious consequence of a two-tale scheme rejected in favour of a single-tale one? A prime reason may have been his realization that the effort which he originally envisaged was far too comprehensive and time-consuming to be workable. Another factor must have been the virtue-vice stamp that the Parson’s Tale and the Retraction set upon everything. From the time that these two were included the Canterbury Tales were implicitly and explicitly turned into a group of tales governed by the themes of virtue and vice within the frame of a manual of confession, for this is what the Parson’s Tale is all about and what is underscored by what Chaucer has to say about the Canterbury Tales in the Retraction. It is not the Tales as such which he disowns but only “thilke that sownen into synne”, thus confirming a division into good and bad, virtue and vice. This consideration points a plausible way to at least a partial explanation of the dramatic reduction of tales. Within a virtue-vice scheme of tales neither the repetitiousness of sin nor the fine distinction of its many variations can be adjudged to be a literary asset. What author in his right mind would be so blind as to make his creations dance to the same tune again and again? Just for the sake of argument, let us assume thirty-five pilgrims as Chaucer’s desired optimum and fit them into a vice-and-virtue framework, on – say – a four to one distribution, in a two-tale scheme for each. That is twenty-eight times two tales set to deal with the various branches of the Seven Sins. That way lie dullness and ineffectiveness, for why should a point already belaboured be dealt with all over again, even if the emphasis should be on a variant aspect? Nor can assigning distinctly different sins in the second telling been a serious option. Though theologically feasible in the light of the great overlappingness of all sin, the result would have been chaotic and in flagrant contradiction of the literary direction in which Chaucer was inexorably moving – a growing inclination to join his narrators’ characters to their tales. In point of fact, any such second tales may be argued to have seriously detracted from the effect of the first. It is difficult to imagine the Miller and the Reeve coming up with new tales or the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner switching to a sideline of

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the subjects on which they have already performed so superbly. While the latter two are perfectly employable for every sin in the book, any second deployment would have been a literary mistake in the light of the monolithic nature of the fusion that was effected between their prologues and tales Something similar may be claimed for our hypothetical seven virtuous story-tellers in such a two-tale scheme. To begin with, Chaucer’s tales of virtuousness tend to be all-inclusive (compare, for instance, the Man of Law’s Tale, the Clerk’s Tale, the Melibee, and the Second Nun’s Tale) – meaning that the presence of one virtue automatically implies that of all the others and such tales consequently tend to be rather repetitious. Then there is the observable fact that virtue is in itself much less spicy than sin, which means that something like fourteen tales dealing with the seven virtues would have contributed to a much less inspiring and inspired Canterbury Tales. Even when we take into account the medieval liking for a good moral tale, so different from our modern taste, their number and their contents would have made the book much less tantalizing. We are, after all, talking about a sophisticated and doubtless pampered public. The remaining alternative, a virtue-vice mixture of tales for each of the various narrators, would have been inconsistent and wide open to the charge of hypocrisy, and would have controverted the message of both the Parson’s Tale and the Retraction. This leads us to assume that it may have been the spectre of repetitiousness and the demands of literary common sense, as well as a matter of workload, that led Chaucer to reject the four-tale scheme in favour of just one tale for every pilgrim. It is something that works well. It allows him to pick a small but distinctive number of sins typical of every Deadly Sin and adapt them to specifically delineated pilgrims. There are – vide the Parson’s Tale – enough of them to serve for good number of tales by a good number of pilgrims. On a more limited basis, there is room for seven virtues, too. A final important reason why Chaucer should have discarded his old scheme in favour of a linear sequence of tales is to be found in the next chapters. There I shall argue that his change of plan was motivated and given shape by Gower’s Confessio Amantis, which is a similarly linearly-constructed work. If some of us should feel that not enough of the tales conform to the broad outline of this picture, this ought to be no particular cause

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for worry in an unfinished work in a state of permanent flux and frequently postponed revision. Besides, let us note that our automatic assumption that a tale’s theme and the virtue or vice discussed ought to coincide is not necessarily shared by the fourteenth century. Thus, Chaucer’s tale of Custance adheres faithfully to its basic theme of steadfastness, yet in the Confessio Amantis Gower uses the same tale to illustrate the sin of detraction, which is nowhere near its central theme. This should caution us. While Chaucer appears to take our view of things, there is no saying what departures he was willing to entertain in order to get everything into line. Indeed, on this basis (and, once again, the Confessio is a good illustration) almost every tale can be shown to deal with either virtue or vice. All the same, what we ought to find – if this theory is correct – is signs of this scheme in formation. So we shall, for this is what much of this study is all about. What remains to be added here, to be addressed below, is that there is a good chance that the final scrapping of tales, for the reasons sketched just now, left so severely reduced a groundplan that it moved Chaucer to flesh out the number of narrators by way of compensation. Much of what has been said here is, at heart, a return to Tupper’s old theory of the Canterbury Tales as an exposition of the Seven Deadly Sins and Robertson’s cupiditas/caritas discussion. So it is, but the point to be noted here is that it has been arrived at by a different route and train of argument, which indicates that there may be more to the patristic approach than the Chaucer field has been willing to allow in the past few decades. It is certainly true that the association is not particularly felicitous, for Tupper’s theory was savaged rather severely at the time and Robertson is seen as passé. In the light of what is argued here and confirmed in the chapters to come, it would seem that the essence of their theories still holds. This is not truly surprising. There was something of a glut of patristic exegesis in the latter half of the past century which served to inure the Chaucer field against its omnipresence and set into motion all sort of counter-mechanisms. It nevertheless is rather difficult to believe that the looming presence of the Parson’s Tale at the end of the work, carrying untold exegetical implications with respect to everything that precedes, should have been so marginalized. Certainly, Robertson is ripe for a reappreciation of his ideas on the Canterbury Tales. Likewise, Tupper’s general idea on the involvement of Deadly Sin and remedial Grace as a guiding theme has much

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to commend it. What he was undone by was the fact that he failed to provide a thorough grounding for his theory, was careless in identifying the Deadly Sins involved, and does not seem to have taken the unfinished and unrevised condition of the Tales into sufficient account. Where we further differ from Tupper is in rejecting that “once in the grip of the Parson’s penitential” Chaucer, during the latter half of the collection, “blends dexterously sins and social types by making the representative of each class the exponent of the very Vice that he explicitly and implicitly condemns in his tale”.39 It may have been an idea that Chaucer explored for a while, but this was not followed up in any clear fashion. A modified version, however, allowing each pilgrim to tell a tale of vice or virtue and doing so (or being ultimately meant to do so) according to some measure of interplay between character and narrative seems eminently tenable.40 A Final Body Count For indications of what Chaucer had in mind, the General Prologue is the natural place to try and do some archeological spadework. Here he expressly informs us about 29 pilgrims, “wel nyne and twenty” (line 24), exclusive of the Host and Chaucer the pilgrim himself. With “wel” signifying “as many as”, this gives us a fellowship of 31 setting out from Southwark. When we start counting the persons that he mentions, however, there is an extra pilgrim, for Chaucer’s list adds up to 32 and this is not counting the Canon’s Yeoman or the elusive Canon himself. To confuse matters even further, there is Manly/Rickert’s contention that line 164 was never finished by Chaucer and that its inclusion of the words “and preestes thre” is self-contra39

‘The Quarrels of the Canterbury Pilgrims’, JEGP 14 (1915): 256-70, at 256-57. If I understand Tupper correctly, this is more or less what he argues in his ‘Chaucer and the Cambridge Edition’, JEGP 39 (1940): 502-26, at 513. His identification of the tales involved as the Pardoner’s, the Wife of Bath’s and those she sets into motion accords well with my own ideas. As for Tupper’s identification, in the same article, of the sins in the Marriage Group, this is somewhat shaky. The Pardoner’s stock sin is clearly avarice in the light of his own insistence and certainly not gluttony, as Tupper argues with reference to Owst (also, cf Chapter Six on this subject, which shows that gluttony and lechery are the most marginal of sins in the Pardoner’s make-up). In much the same way, for all her sins of pride, the Wife of Bath’s continuous emphasis on her lusty sexuality must mean that basically she stands for something like Voluptas and hence for lechery, or rather lechery and gluttony combined. 40

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dictory and extraneous.41 This is not so much an argument as a personal sentiment and we would do well to accept our “preestes thre” as fully intentional on Chaucer’s part. They fit in well with the notion argued in these pages that the incisive four-to-one reduction of tales is likely to have moved Chaucer to pad out the remaining company by way of compensation. When one of the three priests does crop up later as the Nun’s Priest and with a tale of his own, this is a good indication that the half-line in question may be authentic after all, the more so as editors have, from the very first, declined to excise it and replace it with some alternative. Yet evidently, whatever way we turn, the numbers remain intractable – a situation that puts paid to some of the more esoteric interpretations of the number of pilgrims.42 What this situation means is that the General Prologue, which must have been among the earliest parts of the Canterbury Tales in progress, remained in a state of revision up to the end.43 In this connection Manly notes that its copytext for the early manuscripts cannot have been Chaucer’s archetype, which would have been full of “additions, changes, cancellations, and all the various incidents of composition” nor his “final copy, perfected and ready for issuing to the public”. It “seems rather to have been a fair copy, representing – with some slight scribal errors – the stage of development the text had then [i.e. the time of his death] reached, and intended to serve as a basis for further work”.44 I am not so sure about this. As long as the archetype was amended in a legible and transparent fashion, it could have been made to serve very well. And there are plainly several ways imagin41

Manly/Rickert, vol ii, p 95. Cf note 1. Also Caroline Eckhardt, who argues in favour of the number 33 as being symbolically meaningful and sees Chaucer’s reference to 29 as a redactional oversight. Caroline D. Eckhardt, ‘The Number of Chaucer’s Pilgrims: A Review and Reappraisal’, Yearbook of English Studies 5 (1975): 1-18. Given the permanent state of flux that seems to characterize the development of the Tales, I think it doubtful that the tales which we possess represent Chaucer’s targeted number. On the other hand, the number 33 , which gives us the years of Christ’s ministry, goes together well with my feeling that the pilgrims are meant to enter Canterbury on either Maundy Thursday, the day commemorating the Last Supper (remember the Host’s supper), or perhaps Easter Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. The oversight notion – respectively, editorial laxity on Chaucer’s part – is quite popular and probably not too far from the truth, even if it becomes ever clearer to us in the course of this study that there may have been good reasons for him to put off all sorts of minor revision. 43 Benson, pp 797-98. 44 Manly/Rickert, vol ii, p 95. 42

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able of how Chaucer could have dealt with the problem of doing this, such as erasures (as sketched in his poem to Adam Scriveyn), sidenotes, the pasting in of corrections and new ideas or the insertion of loose leaves. It is certainly unlikely for him to have gone in for a new and fair copy whenever changes were needed, particularly as the evidence is that quite a few alterations were effectuated and there were still a lot of them to come as well. What this does not tell us is how the General Prologue was composed. Was the outline that we are familiar with largely conceived in one piece, at an early date, with the pilgrims as convenient pegs to hang incoming tales on,45 was it compiled in the wake of suitable tales coming in on whose basis the appropriate pegs were invented, or should we take an intermediate view? In the light of what we will find, we should be inclined to favour the first option as representative of the original state of the General Prologue, yet accept that in due course additions and changes were effected in a number of places. The nonexistence of variant versions, by the way, is an important consideration in support of Blake’s rejection of pre-view circulation. The unsatisfactory pilgrim count is evidently related to Chaucer’s change of plan. It is an entirely plausible thought that the original idea for the Canterbury Tales should have been on a somewhat less grandiose scale than the present condition of the General Prologue suggests and that the drastic four-to-one reduction led Chaucer to decide and flesh out the remainder. It explains why his figures do not match and fits in easily with the notion of an expanded number of pilgrims within an over-all virtue-vice scheme. For us to accept this, we must of course also be prepared to accept that the figure of 29 which he himself mentions may itself be a midway correction and need not be the number that he set out with or was seeking to arrive at. Such a view carries the attractive implication that Chaucer’s old plan was never as disproportionate as it has always looked. Boccaccio’s Decamerone could have served as model for the framework of the Canterbury Tales, so that Chaucer may have set out with a similar number of tales in mind. Thus, for Boccaccio’s one hundred tales the original design of the Canterbury Tales could have been for a similar number, distributed over a maximum of 25 pilgrims. An even more attractive option, given nearness in time and place as well as what I 45

Brewer, p 280.

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shall argue in the next chapter, is that Chaucer originally sought to make the extent of his book coincide with the eighty-odd tales of Gower’s Confessio Amantis. It is tempting to think that this should be testable by taking the various detailed portraits of the pilgrims as roughly representative of the initial state of the General Prologue and the sketchy remainder as later additions. Admittedly, there is only incidental corroboration of this, as we shall see below, yet as a hypothesis is has the virtue of combining clarity and common sense. As it is, there are exactly 20 detailed portraits. Well within the margin of 25, the result is worth weighing. Assuming that no pilgrim was ever cancelled, this may mean once again that the original idea was for as “few” as eighty tales and that it was indeed John Gower’s Confessio with which Chaucer sought to synchronize his own effort. What we also find is that the one-line reference to the Second Nun and and the “preestes thre”, among whom the Nun’s Priest, indicate a later, makeshift inclusion, probably resulting from a desire on Chaucer’s part to record the addition of new tales or his intention to do so, without bothering to provide, for the time being, a complementary portrait. Much the same can be said for the Five Guildsmen: the Haberdasher, Dyer, Carpenter, Weaver and Carpet-Maker. Their portrayal is too brief to be satisfactory and suggests a quick insertion at some later date. They evidently serve to herald a set of planned tales, four of which never achieved realization. I say four, for it is rather obvious that the presence here of a Carpenter indicates the author’s intention to correct the Miller-Reeve conflict with its flimsy and unsatisfactory representation of the Reeve as a carpenter by trade. Why on earth should he have wished to include another carpenter, if not for this reason? This is made the more likely as the Carpenter is also the odd man out in this company, the other four fitting into a broad definition as members of the Drapers’ Guild. In fact, in turning the Reeve into a carpenter in order to make the Miller’s Tale fit Chaucer shows us not only that the Reeve’s portrait in the General Prologue came before his tale but also how he dealt with the discrepancy problems resulting from a tale that was not quite fitted for its slot. When he decided to use this “churl’s tale” (fabliau) about the cuckolding of an old carpenter for the MillerReeve tiff, he simply included a few lines in the links to iron out the inconsistency of making it bear on a reeve. This can hardly have been

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a final solution and it stands to reason that it was to be addressed more satisfactorily at some later date. It is another case of Chaucer recording a departure from the original plan in the nearest available location. A subsequent step, given time and opportunity, would have been to adapt the General Prologue to the new situation. This stage is one which he reached, though only marginally, which is why we find a Carpenter included in his all too sketchy portrait of the Five Guildsmen. The final stage, one presumes, would have been one in which the General Prologue figured a more extensively portrayed Carpenter to replace the Reeve in his quarrel with the Miller. The Reeve/Carpenter case is not an isolated one. Something similar is found with the Sergeant of the Law. Such sergeants were the aristocrats of the legal profession. There were twenty-one of them in the entire realm, ranking as social equals with the pinnacle of the knighthood.46 Thus the Ellesmere order’s awarding of the second place to this important official, rudely but entertainingly interrupted by a spate of churls’ tales, is entirely in line with his high status. What is remarkable is that by the time that he gets to tell his tale, his Introduction reveals his stature to have dropped by several degrees to a mere “Man of Law”, which, as far as one can discern, simply defines him as a lawyer. What should concern us here is that this change of emphasis is something that actually took place, thus corroborating the notion of a continuing process of reviewing and revision. Of further interest is the apparent fact that the Man of Law’s portrait did not get rewritten in the General Prologue and thus – as one more instance – appears to confirm Chaucer’s evident penchant for an on-the-spot effectuation of new directions and only cursory attention to revision. Another addition, already familiar to us, is of course the Canon’s Yeoman. Chaucer may have toyed with the idea of a tardy joiner-up from the very first – there is after all a full portrait involved here, even if this is the Canon’s whose departure is as hurried as his arrival. The Host’s reference to “a myrie tale or tweye”, combined with the Yeoman’s implied statement that they are Canterbury-bound [line 624], may indicate that his Tale was included when Chaucer was still contemplating his old plan, even if this is somewhat counter-indicated by the absence of a portrait of the man. 46

Benson, p 811.

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A complementary consideration here is the matter of the absentee links, links that we would expect but do not get in the Canterbury Tales as they have come down to us. It is a reasonable assumption that Chaucer was working towards a system of tale links serving both as epilogue to the preceding tale and introduction to the next. In spite of editorial intervention this is the observable situation in the actual work. So why not also assume that the absentee links are, by and large, a matter of absentee tales? Surely it would have been sensible for Chaucer to put off writing such links until he knew what two tales he was going to connect them with. There may have been the occasional link that he could have written but left until another time, but in general it seems logical to attribute both types of absence to uneffectuated writing plans. The Alternative Reading This may be as good a place as any to pay some attention to Charles Owen’s “alternative reading” of the Canterbury Tales.47 This sees the text of Chaucer’s masterpiece as a collection of fragments reflecting different stages of his plan for the work as a whole. One stage of the plan, probably the earliest, called for a collection of tales ending with one introduced by the Parson’s Prologue. This tale would complete an over-all design prepared for in the Man of Law’s End-link. The Parson, avoided by the Host after their early encounter until there are no other pilgrims to call on, would use his turn at storytelling to remind the pilgrims of the religious meaning of their journey, thus effecting a startling reversal and showing the efficacy of penitence at the end. A second stage involved the detachment of the Wife of Bath from her position of interrupter in the Man of Law’s End-link and from her original tale, the Shipman’s Tale; the development of the two big series of tales, B2 on the one hand and DCEF on the other; and the inclusion of a series of geographic clues, including the references to the area near Canterbury in G and H, that tie the storytelling more closely to the progress of the journey. A third stage multiplied the number of tales, made the storytelling a contest, and arranged a new ending, the supper at the Tabard with the Host choosing the pilgrim who has told the best stories and the other pilgrims paying for the winner’s meal.

For this third stage to be effective, Owen must of course also include a homeward journey. This is why he claims that “the text of 47

Owen, ‘Alternative Reading’: 237-50, esp 246-47.

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The Canterbury Tales nowhere supports the theory so popular with critics that Chaucer abandoned the homeward journey. Even the original ending, prepared for in the Parson’s Prologue, gives no indication that the pilgrims are completing a one-way journey”. This view is supported by Dolores Frese, while Derek Pearsall says this:48 The four-tale plan was a late addition to the General Prologue, designed to extend the tale-telling possibilities of The Canterbury Tales almost indefinitely, meanwhile postponing the bringing to an end of a project that had become coterminous for Chaucer with life itself”. In her view “the ‘ending’ of The Canterbury Tales, with the Parson’s ringing words comparing the pilgrimage, as the pilgrims prepare to enter Canterbury, with the pilgrimage of every man’s life to ‘Jerusalem celestial’ (X.51), thus becomes the conclusion of a plan that had been superseded. Chaucer’s characteristic aversion to closure could hardly be more neatly expressed.

This curious compilation of claims is characterized by Derek Brewer as “over-ingenious”, to which he adds that “the sympathetic speculation that the project ‘had become coterminous for Chaucer with life itself’ agrees much better with the ending as we have it when the Parson sees the pilgrimage as a model of the way to the celestial Jerusalem. To think otherwise requires a rewriting of The General Prologue later than the The Parson’s Prologue and Tale for which there is no evidence. To devise a new plan of some 120 tales when only 24 had been completed [sic] by perhaps 1395 is to exaggerate even Chaucer’s optimism, when by the normal standards of the time he was getting old. It also exaggerates his reluctance to close.”49 More specifically, Owen’s picture is full of inconsistencies. To mention a few, he is not very precise about the Parson’s Prologue, which does indicate that there is just a one-way journey. He cannot account for the function of the Parson’s Tale and therefore simply leaves out any good discussion of it. The suggestion that the General Prologue is one of Chaucer’s late pieces of writing does not hold water: it is contradicted by the presence of the unportrayed pilgrims and the faulty number of 29, neither of which ought to be there if he were right. The definition of B2 as “the development of [a] big series of tales” is too much honour for a Fragment that lacks a clear guiding theme and rather looks as if it served, at least partially, as a file in 48

Pearsall, p 233. For Frese, see note 1. Derek Brewer, A New Introduction to Chaucer (New York: Addison, Wesley, Longman, 2nd edition 1998), pp 274-75. 49

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which to park tales awaiting a subsequent assignation. Similarly, his notion of a late inclusion of geographic clues is not credible. Chaucer’s topographical data are largely consonant with a one-way pilgrimage, with the occasional badly fitting watering place easily attributed to his elimination of the homeward leg of the journey and to postponed revision. If they were added in Owen’s third and final stage, why is it that there is no clarity in this matter and not a single backward reference to Canterbury or, alternatively, any anticipatory remark about the pilgrims’ return to London with the exception of the initial announcement in the General Prologue? Most of all, Owen is mistaken about Chaucer’s multiplication of tales. All the indications are that Chaucer’s great headache was the finding of adequate narrative material. From my point of view, it is not only suggested by his glad embrace of the much less expansive new plan but even more so by the lack of headway that he made once he had taken this up. Even the Tales as we have them show through the absentee tales how little progress he actually made in the course of fourteen years, a fact that is underlined by the consideration that a good many of the tales that he did include had already been written at an earlier date. The very idea of Chaucer experimenting with the Canterbury Tales for, say, four or five years and at best arriving at a dozen tales and then deciding to extend them along the lines of the General Prologue’s plan of four tales per pilgrim and an approximate total of 120 tales beggars belief. When even his optimistic inclusion of some nine unportrayed pilgrims appears to have run into serious trouble, with only the Nun’s Priest and the Second Nun coming up with a tale but not even as much as a portrait in the General Prologue, the notion of a late quadrupling of tales cannot be regarded as anything but a fallacy. Even when arguing from Owen’s point of view, we cannot fail to note that the idea of Chaucer switching to a more grandiose scheme is negated by the observable fact that this never got him beyond a meagre and incomplete two dozen of tales. The Chaucer Public Accustomed as we are to printed books flooding the market in steady streams and huge quantities, we often forget how entirely different the book market was in the age of Chaucer and the same thing goes for those for whom manuscripts were produced. Predating the

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fifteenth-century paper revolution and the growth of commercialized copying ventures, book production in the second half of Chaucer’s century was, partly on account of the pestilences, considerably limited both on the supply side of things and in its output. Books were still reproduced along traditional lines, that is, by scribes – such as Chaucer’s Adam Pynkhurst “Scriveyn” – and at considerable cost. Apart from the occasional presentation copy to an important patron, copies were generally commissioned by the interested parties. In general, books were produced, in all sort of overlapping fashion, for the clergy, the universities, governmental institutions, commercial interests, rich collectors and, finally, for entertainment, which is where the Host’s “solaas” comes in. Such entertainment, we may assume, was never intended for any general public in the modern sense but for a very private audience instead. In their case, this was the London court and those more or less narrowly associated with it: a diminutive coterie, by the looks of it. We are all familiar with the well-known Troilus depiction of Chaucer reading to a courtly audience and its equally romantic preRaphaelite successor by Ford Madox Brown, and what tends to stick in our memory is an image of him as a court poet par excellence. The plain fact, however, is that the records that we have on him paint no such picture. What we find is that Chaucer was a courtier active in the Ricardian court, closely allied to John of Gaunt, and capable enough to be entrusted with diplomatic missions and other tasks and functions. He began his service as a page in the Ulster household and so ended up closely connected to the Lancastrian side of politics, among other things through his marriage to Philippa, daughter of Sir Payne [or Paon] Roet and sister to Katherine Swynford. The latter was John of Gaunt’s mistress who later, in 1396, became his third wife, thus ultimately making Chaucer brother-in-law to one of the mightiest men in the land. Ironically, his connection with Gaunt provides the only clear evidence, in the shape of the Book of the Duchess, that we have of any overlapping functions as both courtier and poet. With its lament on the passing of Gaunt’s first wife Blanche, the White Lady, it is the closest that we come to a suggestion of Chaucer courting patronage. Yet this is thought to be a mistaken construction to put on things: supposedly, he was commissioned to write something commemorative in his known capacity as a person with a knack for poetry, rather than a poet actively engaged in seeking patronage. The person doing this

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commissioning is identified by the Fairfax MS as Gaunt himself “pitiously complaynynge the deathe of the sayd dutchesse blanche”.50 Be this as it may, as it seems strange for Gaunt to have left the venting of his grief to someone who, by the implication of this view, was an amateur versifier, Chaucer’s further writings exhibit no great desire for either royal or aristocratic patronage.51 His continuing Lancastrian connection may well have contributed to this, in the light of the growing animosity against John of Gaunt and his part in late fourteenth-century politics, as well as the domestic political troubles that beset Richard throughhout the two final decades of the century. The early Prologue to the Legend of Good Women includes a reference to Queen Anne, wife to Richard II, and its King and Queen of Love may well be the royal couple but the work as such is not dedicated with the fawning and servility that are so often associated with this. His other major writings, such as the Canterbury Tales, are barren of elements to suggest a desire on Chaucer’s part to court the rulers’ good will, although some of his short poems do point in such a direction.52 Friends rather than anyone else, to the exclusion of the royal circle, are the ones to whom Chaucer addresses his writings and even here a specific mention – as found in Troilus and Criseyde – is a bit of a rarity. This is how modern criticism looks upon the patronage matter. It is way of looking at things that is less substantial than it seems, if only because it so strongly urges us to see Chaucer as the independent mind that we wish him to be, as a reflection of modern ideas on a writer’s role in society. While we have no sure way of deciding the issue, it is plainly one which obliges us to tread warily. Thus, when we look back on the evidence, the Book of the Duchess can hardly fail to be a commissioned piece, with Chaucer figuring not as a lay rhymer but as an acknowledged poet. This strongly implies patronage, just as does the early Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. Poems that point in the same direction are: An ABC, written for Blanche when she was still alive; Fortune, addressed to either John of Gaunt, King Richard or even Henry of Derby, also known as Lancaster and immortalized by Shakespeare as Bolingbroke. And then there is the Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse, which is addressed to the latter as the newly installed Henry IV, which dates 50

Benson, p 966. See also Pearsall in the next two notes. Pearsall, pp 198-202, 271-73. 52 Pearsall, pp 178-81. 51

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the poem at 1399 or rather early 1400, as Robert F. Yeager has proposed.53 While outwardly an uncommissioned effusion on Chaucer’s part, it is plainly concerned with Henry’s patronage. The fact that it has been cast in the shape of something courtly and ends upon a note of apparent flattery seems significant, for surely Chaucer could have approached the King’s Treasury along more commonplace routes. Hailing Henry as his new overlord, the poem may be as much inspired by Gaunt’s death as Richard’s deposition and thus implicitly, through reference to his poor purse, been intended to remind Henry of his service to the House. This would account for Henry’s royal gesture of doubling Chaucer’s stipend soon after. Also, the new regime’s lasting concern with legitimizing its rule could well have led to the commissioning of some supportive writing, such as found in the shape of Gower’s Cronica tripertita. Chaucer’s clever poem with its contrasting of a personal complaint and the national weal and the interlaced courtly puns likewise seems to fit the bill. Nor should the absence of a dedication of the Canterbury Tales be taken as an argument against the possibility of patronage, as this is easily accounted for by, first of all, the unfinished state of the work and, secondly, the persistently uncertain political condition of the land. Chaucer’s tardiness in coming to grips with his reduced Canterbury Tales could point in this direction as well, suggesting someone temporizing while awaiting political matters to come to a head before offering his prospectus of the work to a sympathetic patron. What is unmistakable is that it is precisely among court circles where, as modern commentators point out, we must look for Chaucer’s public in the final two decades of the century and by “public” we ought to think primarily of a listening public. “Presentation to a living audience of friends and patrons” is how Charles Koban defines it, thereby echoing the findings of Bronson, Coleman, Crosby and Giffin.54 This accords well with observations on public reading in Eng53

Robert F. Yeager, ‘Chaucer’s “To His Purse”: Begging, or Begging Off?’, Viator 36 (2005): 373-414. 54 Charles Koban, ‘Hearing Chaucer Out: the Art of Persuasion in the Wife of Bath’s Tale’, ChauR 5 (1971): 225-239, at 225; Bertrand H. Bronson, ‘Chaucer’s Art in Relation to his Audience’, in Five Studies in Literature (Berkeley: U of California Publications, vol 8, 1940): 1-53; Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996); Ruth Crosby, ‘Chaucer and the Custom of Oral Delivery’, Spec 13 (1938): 413-32; Mary Giffin, Studies on Chaucer and His Audience (Hull/Québec: les Editions

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land made by such contemporary French men of letters as Guillaume Machaut and David Aubert.55 I use the term primarily advisedly, as it is difficult to accept that the entirety of the Canterbury Tales was meant to be so presented. The dividing line between reading and being read to is rather fuzzy in several places. A forbidding piece like the Parson’s Tale can hardly have been intended for an audience and this also goes for some of the other tales. For instance, if we are to believe what Chaucer himself writes in the Second Nun’s Prologue, the tale to follow was for a readership and not any listeners attending a speaker.56 Our next question is who exactly the people were to whom Chaucer addressed his writings. Naturally, there were the royals and their entourage. John of Gaunt must have figured large, as patron, employer and ultimately brother-in-law. Plainly “moral Gower” was one and so was “philosophical” Ralph Strode, poet and philosopher, the two men to whom he dedicated his Troilus. For all the praise, finding Gower here is a bit of a surprise, probably reflecting the mild early ’eighties. Politically at least, Chaucer and Gower were no apparent soulmates through much of the final decade of the century. Chaucer was deeply embedded in the Ricardian court. However, being allied to the unpopular Gaunt and possibly for this reason, he seems seldom given to taking political sides. Gower, on the other hand, moved away from adulation of the young King, as expressed in his Vox clamantis, to turn to his greatest rival, Gaunt’s son Henry of Derby. Whether by temperament or choice, Chaucer, as we get to know him from his writings, seems to have preferred to stand in the wings and provide ironical commentary rather than enter into the internecine lists of court, while Gower was much more politically engaged and outspokenly so, if we are to accept his address to Henry in his Confessio as genuinely belonging to the early ’nineties rather than what it more probably is: an interpolation dating from after Henry’s coup.57 Thus, when for all their differences, John Hurt Fisher paints a picture of two friends, united by a common interest in religion, literature and l’Eclair, 1956), passim. 55 James J. Murphy, Medium Aevum LXVL.2 (1997): 328-29, reviewing Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996). Also Jones, pp 21-25. 56 Second Nun’s Prologue, lines 24-25 and 77-84. Chaucer speaks of translation, reading and writing in this place. 57 Jones, pp 96-103.

Chaucer’s Changing Design of the Canterbury Tales | 39

an ordered society governed by good rulers,58 this looks somewhat naive vis-à-vis the deeply divisive political and religious currents which swept the country at this time. Others who played their parts in Chaucer’s literary milieu (and Gower’s, no doubt) must have been Sir Peter – or is it Robert? – Bukton and Henry Scogan, whom we come across in his short poems, and not to forget Sir Philippe de la Vache, to whom his Truth is addressed.59 They were part of a wider set of some dozen or so likeminded nobles known as the “Lollard knights”, a name indicating a shared view on theological reform and stemming from a happier time predating the later repression of Lollardry.60 No doubt several people belonging to their households should be included among Chaucer’s following. Actual names have been retrieved from fourteenth-century obscurity. These include: Sir Richard Sturry, Sir Lewis Clifford, who served as go-between in Chaucer’s correspondence with Deschamps, Sir Thomas Latimer, Sir William Neville, Sir John Montagu, the later Earl of Salisbury, and Sir John Clanvowe. Most of these were longtime acquaintances whom Chaucer knew from the time of Edward III. Further powerful associates included Sir William de Beauchamp and the already signalled De la Vache, son-in-law to Clifford. All of these were men of consequence as well as friends.61 On a somewhat less exalted scale but still part of “the court” in a wider sense, there were important men with whom Chaucer associated. Among these we should note merchant barons such as Sir William Walworth, Sir Nicholas Brembre and Sir John Philipot; ambassadors and city officials like Sir Guichard d’Angle, Sir John Burley, Sir Peter Courtenay, Walter Skirley, bishop of Durham, and John Hend, sometime mayor of London. Besides Gower, there were other writers: Thomas Hoccleve, scribe, writer, high official-to-be, who was a generation or two younger than Chaucer, and Thomas Usk whose Testament of Love was at the time of Henry VIII mistakenly regarded as a work by Chaucer – to which we owe its survival, however corrupt. 58 Fisher, pp 204-302. In the course of this study, however, we shall find that their relationship may have been at a low ebb in the period when Chaucer composed the Canterbury Tales. 59 Benson, pp 17, 636, 1085. 60 Pearsall, pp 181-84; Robinson, p xxvii. 61 J.W. Sherborne, ‘Aspects of English Court Culture’ in: English Court Culture in the Late Middle Ages, eds V.J. Scattergood and J.W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983), p 23; Pearsall, pp 181-84; Robinson, p xxvii.

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It is often suggested that the royals and their close following were little interested in literature but this looks suspiciously like postRicardian propaganda. The cultural atmosphere of Richard’s court was certainly a receptive place for all sort of writing, both religious and secular, particularly when this was in English as the popular new means of disseminating ideas quickly and widely.62 In official historiography this goes largely unrecognized, exception being made for Richard’s Queen Anne, who imported a huge library when she came to live in England. Yet here, too, there is usually a “Lancastrian” reservation. She is regarded as having been insufficiently versed in everyday English to have made a mark on the Chaucerian scene.63 What about Richard’s nemesis, Henry of Derby, in this context? Where did he stand with respect to Chaucer? This is not an easy question, nor are there, I regret to say, any easy answers. As one of the Lords Appellant who were briefly in power in 1388, he is unlikely to have belonged to anything even distantly resembling a “Chaucer set”. Yet he is irrevocably linked to Chaucer through the latter’s extensive service to the House of Lancaster. This link is extended further through his father’s marriage to his erstwhile mistress, Chaucer’s sister-in-law Katherine Swynford, which effectively makes Chaucer his stepuncle. Ay, and there’s the rub. It is doubtful that an aristocrat like Henry, the flower of England’s knighthood, would have taken kindly to this. If his father in his dotage wished to marry his floozy, this was bad enough but having to defer to her upstart commoner brother-inlaw with his literary ways may have been a bridge too far. Of course, it is impossible to say if this is a true picture. Henry may have liked and appreciated Katherine, but human psychology suggest the reverse. She and her entourage may well have been the object of Henry’s most devout dislike, if not worse. On the whole then, Chaucer’s public belonged to the upper layers of London society, roughly defined as the chivalrous class64 or, if one wishes, the aristocracy and the “middle strata” that Strohm dis-

62

Jones, pp 60-87. Pearsall, p 180. This picture is contested by Sherborne, who argues in favour of a general cultural interest on Richard and Anne’s parts and cites Thomas Arundel’s funeral speech for Anne’s (possible) familiarity with vernacular English. 64 This definition is taken from Lee Patterson’s review of Paul Strohm’s Social Chaucer in Speculum 67 (1992:2): 485-88, at 486. 63

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cerns.65 More specifically, they probably included “the entourage of king and nobility [but also a] multitude of household knights and officials, career diplomats and civil servants”,66 affluent London merchants and, no doubt, their hangers-on. Not all of these, it should be recognized, would have been part of Chaucer’s literary coterie. Nor did all of those who presumably were necessarily belong to the same side of the political spectrum. Several friends who supported Richard, including Brembre and Usk, were brutally victimized when in 1388 the opposition was in full power,67 while Gower was an increasingly outspoken voice in favour of Henry of Derby or so he wants us to believe. When applied to a wider audience, this is one consideration that helps to explain why, if not by natural inclination, Chaucer is so perennially evasive on the great political issues of his day. A Wider Audience? Derek Pearsall paints Troilus as a landmark in Chaucer’s popularity, making a name for him at court, but discerns a turning-away in the Legend of Good Women and a final choice of going his own way, without any patronage whatsoever, in the shape of the Canterbury Tales.68 It is a view that is difficult to share. There is ample reason to doubt his notion that the matter of patronage and short-lived fads, such as the Daisy or Marguerite cult and its passing that we come across in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, were not Chaucer’s thing.69 What evidence there is points in another direction. A further problem lies in the premise that Chaucer commanded none too large a public during his lifetime and actually preferred this, in order to make his own voice heard among an intimate circle and to the exclusion of the command of those in power. If this is correct, how are we to account for Chaucer’s huge popularity in the next century? The first attempts at producing a more or less complete Canterbury Tales stem from immediately before or after his death and the century’s total of texts that have survived is 85 65

Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Cambridge MA/London: Harvard UP, 1989), passim. Scanlon, p 144, narrows down these “strata” to no more than five per cent of the [presumably London] population. Even this looks like a rather high estimate. 66 Derek Pearsall, as cited by Strohm: 6. 67 Jones, pp 57-59 and passim; Pearsall, p 201; Fisher, p 62 68 Pearsall, pp 178-81. 69 Fisher, pp 240-41; Pearsall, pp 191-93.

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(including the early printed editions), an unheard-of figure for any medieval English manuscript and outdone only by the Prick of Conscience.70 Also, Caxton’s printed versions were themselves no doubt based upon the fact that the Tales were one of the most popular collections around and thus likely to help him meet printing expenses and make a profit into the bargain. One would therefore be inclined to think that there must have been a broad basis for Chaucer to have become so well-liked in the near-century after his death. To a considerable degree, these two views are mutually exclusive and it may be that the truth resides somewhere in the middle. Doubtless there was something like a trusted and intimate Chaucer set. One might even suppose that in the early years of Henry IV’s reign, when its repressive nature was not too marked yet or precisely because its first signs were making itself felt, loyal Chaucer afficionados sought to preserve and distribute the Canterbury Tales before ecclesiastical and secular authorities could crack down upon the book for good. Yet also, contrary to some of the critics, why should we refuse to accept the implications of the old picture of Chaucer giving recitations, as illustrated in the well-known Troilus frontispiece (Cambridge MS 61, roughly dated at 1420), and accept the simultaneous existence of a wider and perhaps somewhat less intimate audience? Surely it is not too bad an idea to suppose the picture to be a memory of earlier days when Chaucer made well-attended appearances to read to assembled courtiers or court-associated households. He is, after all, entertaining enough (hugely so for his time, one would think) to have inspired any number of people and acquired a quickly spreading reputation and attendance through word-of-mouth recommendation. Pearsall comes up with the reservation that the Troilus portrait shows Chaucer without a book and cannot therefore be taken to be reading from his Tales.71 If not simply the artist’s omission, this can be countered by pointing out that, as a well-schooled person, he may well have had several of his tales by heart and been able to duly recite these, a feat not at all uncommon for those living in his day and age.72 70

Pearsall, p 231. Pearsall, pp 179-80. 72 Brewer, p 15; Nevill Coghill, editor of Geoffrey Chaucer:The Canterbury Tales (1951; Harmondsworth: Penguin 1965), actually claims a prodigious memory on Chaucer’s part (p 13). D. S. Brewer, in Chaucer (1953; London: Longman, 1973), p 7, does much the same. 71

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In fact, the early Chaucer portraits never show any book. They usually represent him in the act of speaking, while underlining a point with his forefinger. Obviously, also, most of them are of derivative nature and the impression that one gets is that they all stem from two exemplars. Thus, the Ellesmere picture of Chaucer on horseback is anatomically correct from the waist up but too large for either his horse or his dwarfish and underdeveloped lower body. This can hardly reflect the true Chaucer, who by his own admission was tubby but not stubby. Rather, it shows that his portrait was based on an earlier one that stopped at the waist. A better rendition of this same portrait or one very much like it is found later in Hoccleve’s De Regimine Principium (1411) but this time as a mirror image. Thus there was probably an early portrait on which both were based and, as mirror images are involved, this may well have been a woodcut, which would have provided both a positive and a negative image. At the same time, there was another picture about, this time viewing him from a different angle (“trois quarts”) and slightly from above, which has given us the Troilus portrait as well as the “1402” one that was popularized in the Penguin edition of the Canterbury Tales and which, in view of its ostensible date, may have been the original. There are two interesting observations to be made here. One is that at some time or other both portrayal traditions coalesced and produced the rosary that he sometimes holds in one hand, as an emblem to underscore that he stands there as a preacher of sententious matter – which seems to me an appropriate note. The other is the remarkable decoration in the top right hand corner of the 1402 portrait: a daisy flowering in three directions. On the left there is a coat of arms. The latter is clear, as it plainly serves to underline Chaucer’s successful station in life, but what about the flowers on the right? Both emblems must stand for the man in a notable fashion, interpretable for his contemporaries without the aid of further comment, much in the way that we understand modern signposts. So what do the daisies signify and why are they so specifically Chaucerian? Here I must ask my readers to forbear and wait until we get to deal with them in the next chapter. There are two or three final curiosities to be added to this overview. One is the fact, as pointed out by Strohm, that appreciation of Chaucer’s writing broadened notably in the half century after his death yet failed to result in an English “Chaucer tradition” of writers following his example. He attributes this to a mixture of old age and

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Lancastrian politics. Thus, the “Chaucer set” of important associates, many of whom were in possession of copies of the Canterbury Tales, did not survive Chaucer by many years. This is a point that we had best discount. Surely Chaucer must have appealed to all ages and not just a “set” of elderly admirers. The other point seems better taken. This is that Henry IV’s rule, always rather indigent and a far cry from the opulence of Richard’s reign, went together with a thoroughly moralistic reaction.73 This explains well why there was never any vogue of Chaucer-oriented writing in these years. Here was a barren place where there was no patronage for the sort of writing popular during Richard’s reign nor any promise of remuneration for those willing to take up Chaucer’s banner. It was not until the later Henry V came to make his mark in the closing years of his father’s reign that Chaucer’s work and ideas were given any prominence again.74 The next curious fact, no doubt related to these changes of moral climate, is that once the Tales were more widely disseminated in the fifteenth century we find that their individual popularity differs greatly from what one would expect. Fifteenth-century anthologies that include tales from the Canterbury collection display a marked preference for moral tales or, perhaps more correctly, for tales whose naming suggests a moral content and an affirmation of current social values.75 Thus, the Wife of Bath, one of Chaucer’s most consummate creations, gets little or no appreciation at all in the collections inspected by Charles Owen and D.S. Silvia.76 Yet, most interesting perhaps of all, is the observable fact that in spite of the repressive climate, both politically and in terms of the Church seeking to clamp down on vernicularity in religious matters, those who could hear and read continued to turn to an author who, in terms of early fifteenth-century England, was at least close to being something of a subversive. Perhaps it was this whiff of illicitness – much like the Russian samizdat in the late twentieth century – that kept up Chaucer’s popularity.

73

Strohm: 18; Jones, pp 118. Jones, pp 258-75. 75 Strohm: 24. The remark about moral content is my own inference. 76 Strohm: 24. Strohm does not discuss the Wife of Bath, but his various enumerations make clear that she was never a favourite in this period. 74

2. Towards Composing a Testament of Love Gower’s Challenge Having come so far, we now return to Chaucer’s changing design of the Canterbury Tales and put the vital question of what it was that caused him to decide upon this radical change of plan and when approximately this was. It cannot have been boredom with the Tales as such, for the post-1390 years show an upswing in his interest,1 though dissatisfaction with the way things were going in the early years and the sheer endlessness of the job undertaken may have played their part. This is where this study comes in, but before going into it we had better have a brief look at some background. What we shall be discussing is the proposition that Chaucer’s remake of the Canterbury Tales was directly inspired by John Gower, and that this was probably the outcome of a challenge to literary combat that was issued in the first version of the Confessio Amantis. It is a striking fact that in 1390, a mere three or four years after the inception of the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s presumable friend and man about court John Gower should have successfully completed the first version of a markedly similar work, the Confessio Amantis, particularly when we keep in mind that it was probably begun at the same approximate date.2 If this should be a matter of simple coincidence, how do we account for the obvious similarities that link the works even when we dismiss the unusual and innovative link-andframe structure that they share? Gower’s dual theme of temporal and spiritual love is repeated throughout the Canterbury Tales. Both books 1

To judge by Benson’s Explanatory Notes, pp 795-965, the majority of tales are at present considered to have been incorporated between 1390 and 1395. 2 Gower may not have been employed as a courtier in the strict sense of the word. This is a matter of some difficulty, given the dearth of information that we have, particularly in the shape of the non-survival of many of the Year-Books of Richard’s reign, but such factors as his attorneyship for Chaucer in 1378, Richard II’s ‘commissioning’ of the Confessio Amantis and Henry of Derby’s gift of a collar in 1393 attest to a close connection with court circles. See also John Hines, Nathalie Cohen and Simon Roffey, ‘Iohannes Gower, Armiger, Poeta’, in Siân Echard ed. A Companion to Gower (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004), pp 23-47, at 25-26.

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are certifiable as exemplum collections, even if this is not their prime function. Their discussion of sin and virtue has its plain parallels. And there are even tales, such as the Man of Law’s Tale and the Wife of Bath’s Tale, which are close renditions of tales that are also found in Gower. Two others point in the same direction: the Manciple’s Tale, arguably satirizing Gower’s Phebus and Coronis (Book III),3 and the Physician’s Tale of Apius and Virginia (Book VII). If we were to eliminate all the stories that we suppose Chaucer to have written or included from 1390, would there still be such a marked correspondence with the Confessio Amantis? The answer must be negative. True, there remains the signal link-and-frame structure, but many other points of correspondence would be obscure or simply absent. At the time of the first Confessio (1390) there was, for instance, no Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale as we know them nor, as far as we can see, most of the other tales that so specifically discuss love, sin and marriage that we call them by the separate name of Marriage Group, all of them presumably dating from the later years of the Canterbury Tales. The very same thing goes for the other tales shared with Gower, with the possible exception of the Man of Law’s Tale and Physician’s Tale. And, very importantly, if there was no new plan yet, there would have been no common linear structure for the Confessio and the Canterbury Tales to share nor anything like the spiritual emphasis that is provided by the Parson. So how do we account for their remarkable subsequent coalescence or, rather, the remarkable Gowerization of the Canterbury Tales? Recognizing that the two authors were familiar with one another and possibly friends at one time, which seems verifiable through the fact that as fellow-authors they paid one another public compliments (Chaucer in his Troilus and Criseyde and Gower in his first version of the Confessio Amantis), and Gower acted as Chaucer’s attorney when the latter went to Italy in 1378,4 we may assume that their use of the link-and-frame structure to experiment upon concurrently was a matter of collusion, of some sort of mutual arrangement. It would be foolish to assume that the two, while moving in the same circles and presumably belonging to the same coterie of literarily 3

Richard Hazelton,‘The “Manciple’s Tale”: Parody and Critique’, JEGP 62 (1963): 1-31. 4 Peter Nicholson, ‘ The Man of Law’s Tale: What Chaucer Really Owed to Gower’, ChauR 26 (1991): 153-73.

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interested courtiers and court associates, could have been engaged on two equally ambitious undertakings of a similar nature at approximately the same time as a matter of coincidence. There must have been something to set both of them going in the same direction. As for the borrowing of tales, it is Chaucer who in the light of the Confessio Amantis’ completion in 1390 is the likely borrower, though there may have been some mutual give-and-take of manuscripts in the run-up (the Man of Law’s Tale looks like an instance), while the link-andframe idea itself is often associated with his Italian travels and may have been his contribution.5 Now before we go on, let us have a closer look at the Confessio Amantis. Its basic framework is an exposition of the Seven Deadly Sins, each with various branchings. They are all illustrated by one or more stories, some eighty altogether. All this is fitted into the Confessio thus. In a love vision Amans, the Lover, who expressly serves as a Gower persona6 and is pining for love, encounters Venus who takes pity on him and sets him the task of confessing his sins against her rule. For this she lends him Genius, her Priest, in order to take his shrift, in the course of which it is ever clearer that the Lover is really a senex amans and past competing, until finally he reveals himself as none other than John Gower.7 The Priest “with elaborate subdivisions worthy of Dante […] treats each of the Seven Deadly Sins in turn, first from the purely Christian standpoint, then from that of the Courts of Love; and he illustrates most points with at least one story. When Gower’s shrift is done, a Parliament of Love is assembled and his case discussed. He is absolved by Venus but also dismissed for good as being past active service in the lists of love”.8 5

Benson, p 3; Robinson, p 1. If both Gower and Chaucer began work around 1386 or 1387, there is some flexibility as to who may have been borrowing from whom up to the date of 1390, when the first version of the Confessio was completed. 6 Gower himself explains in a gloss: “Quasi in persona aliorum, quos amor alligat, fingens se auctor esse Amantem, varias eorum passiones … scribere proponit” [Here, as it were in the person of other people who are held captive by love, the author pretending to be the Lover - proposes to write about their various passions]. 7 John Lawlor, “Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Gower’s Honeste Love” in: Essays in Memory of C.S. Lewis, ed. John Lawlor (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1966), pp 107121, at p 118. Also Kurt Olsson, John Gower and the Structures of Conversion – A Reading of the Confessio Amantis (Cambridge: Brewer, 1992), pp 38-51. 8 Terence Tiller ed. John Gower: Confessio Amantis (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), p 11.

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This is the ostensible Confessio Amantis, which looks dauntingly artificial. But beyond this exterior a different debate is discernible. As Larry Scanlon and others point out, the discourse on fin’ amour is hardly a homage to the conventions of courtly love, of which Gower is quite critical, but rather a convenient peg for him on which to hang his political and moral views.9 Thus much of the book deals with the abuses of the age. He is greatly concerned with the decay of the exemplarity which should reside in the wielding of royal power, especially with respect to the upholding of the law and the dispensing of justice, and similarly that of the Church, which, with profound anti-clericalism, he sees as deeply compromised by its pursuit of worldly aims. There is every reason to believe that Chaucer was acquainted with the 1390 redaction of the Confessio Amantis. At the end of this work, he himself is mentioned in a salutation that has often been interpreted to be on a par with and perhaps in reply to the Troilus dedication and is regarded to take the edge off the old rumour of a quarrel between Chaucer and Gower. We can hardly suppose Chaucer to have been unaware of this passage and may therefore enter as a safe piece of information his awareness of the book and its reference to him. From this it is a small step to accepting that he was also familiar with its contents. Whether he was aware of the subsequent disappearance of the accolade in the later redactions is another matter. Still, once we allow, as we must, that Chaucer was familiar with the 1390 version of the Confessio Amantis or at least parts of it, we must also allow for the possibility that he used it as a model for imitation, in good keeping with general medieval usage. There is no need to belabour Chaucer’s attitude towards this practice. The great majority of his writings attest to wide and enthusiastic borrowing, often through translation, which makes it hard to see how he could have not availed himself of the opportunity presented by the Confessio Amantis. Here is a wealth of tales not unlike the Canterbury Tales, both available for imitation and, by virtue of its similarity, suggestive of this. Add to this that, in the light of the meagre 23 tales that we possess as his final production, out of an intended minimum of at least 33, not to mention the 80-odd tales that he may originally have meant to write, he is likely to have been rather desperate for further material. All the same, let us not put too great a 9

Scanlon, pp 245-297.

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premium on medieval borrowing practice. As the Man of Law indicates in the Pierides passage of his Introduction, to be discussed later, there are limits to this, beyond which one becomes a cheap imitator. These theoretical considerations are borne out by the facts. Chaucer makes demonstrable use of the Confessio Amantis, even if in our perception he does so in a restrained and unobtrusive fashion. It has recently been shown that the Man of Law’s Tale is primarily based upon its parallel tale in the Confessio, even if it also draws substantially upon their common source, Nicholas Trevet’s Anglo-Norman Chronicle. Gower’s tale of Florent is the nearest extant analogue for the Wife of Bath’s Tale and close enough to have been Chaucer’s direct source, as we shall find in the appropriate chapter. There is, as we have seen, the Manciple’s Tale as a possible satire on Gower’s tale of Phebus and Coronis. The argument that it is actually based on the latter is not truly convincing, but the naked fact of a shared tale is incontrovertible. Finally there is the Physician’s Tale, which parallels Gower’s Apius and Virginia but is not supposed to have been influenced by him. To complement this, there is of course the increased thematic and structural coalescence of the Confessio Amantis and the Canterbury Tales that we noted a while ago. If this were a crime novel, the sleuth would point out that the suspect, Geoffrey Chaucer, had not only ample opportunity for imitation but a clear motive to boot. It is here that John Gower enters the stage himself, being the very one to point out what a golden chance the Confessio Amantis affords Chaucer and blithely going on to press him to come up with a Testament of Love along the lines of the Confessio Amantis. We find this in Gower’s 1390 accolade, or dedication, at the end of the work, though these terms are somewhat misleading. The seventeen lines involved are hardly the fulsome praise or flattering reference that Chaucer scholarship makes it out to be. They are full of barbs, smack of rivalry more than anything else and have all the characteristics of a literary challenge. Something like this has also been noted by Paul Strohm. If we eliminate his choice of slightly in the following quotation, he comes very close to what I argue: “Moral Gower” and Chaucer may not have quarreled, as an earlier generation of critics supposed, but they certainly interacted. […] The slightly competitive currents running through Gower’s admonition to Chaucer at the end of the 1392-93 [sic] version of the Confessio and Chaucer’s attribution to the Man of Law of mock dismay at the “un-

50 | Towards Composing a Testament of Love kynde abhomynacions” inherent in subjects treated by Gower are not exactly friendly in the easy vein of Chaucer’s poems to Scogan and Bukton…10

Here are Gower’s words to Chaucer as pronounced by Venus: And gret wel Chaucer whan ye mete, As mi disciple and mi poete: For in the floures of his youthe In sondri wise, as he wel couthe, Of ditees and of songes glade, The whiche he for mi sake made, The lond fulfild is overal: Wherof to him in special Above alle othre I am most holde. For thi now in hise daies olde Thou schalt him telle this message, That he upon his latere age, To sette an ende of alle his werk, As he which is myn owne clerk, Do make his testament of love, As thou hast do thi schrifte above, So that mi Court it mai recorde. [ConfAm, Book VIII, 2941* - 2957*]

The trouble with a text like this is that, from our perspective, we must tread warily when reading between fourteenth-century lines, even if such reading or, rather, listening was an evident medieval pastime. We are, after all, dealing with a set of mind and frame of reference that are different from ours in many respects. What we should also guard against is the automatic assumption that the “I” of this passage is Gower. It is Venus who speaks here, Gower – or rather the Gower persona whom we get to know as Amans – is the “thou” to whom she directs her words. Thus, such expressions as “mi disciple and mi poete” and “myn owne clerk” should basically be read as a definition of Chaucer’s role as a servant of Venus. Yet, inevitably, everything that she says also represents a statement by Gower, the author this time, and it is difficult in this confusion of personae not to come away with the idea that in this place he is implicitly defining his relationship with Chaucer as he sees it. Unlike Chaucer's remark about “moral Gower” at the conclusion of his Troilus and Criseyde, which looks entirely straightforward, 10

Strohm: 13. Of course, he means to say the 1390 version.

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the passage is not so innocent. Despite its apparent warmth, which has seduced most readers into taking it for a compliment, there is a dig at advancing years and virility when Venus, immediately upon declaring Gower unfit for an active love life, conveys the message that Chaucer is a similar reject. Besides, there is a slightly malicious slant to everything. This applies especially to the phrase “testament of love” which cannot fail to be a reference to Thomas Usk. The remark about Chaucer’s song-writing days looks rather tongue-in-cheek, “damning with faint praise”, just like the one about Chaucer growing old, coming as it does from someone presumably ten years his senior. Nor is the invitation for Chaucer to write his Testament of Love very kind, when, snidely echoing Chaucer’s own frequent poetic pretence to be unfit for love, it rubs in the import of such an attitude by implying that, like the Lover in the Confessio Amantis, he is past active love-making or even an active life (ripe for a testament), let alone the writing of a vast volume on the subject. If in jest, the remark was public all the same, which may have rankled. And there is of course always a chance that Gower was hinting at either physical or literary impotency. Another possibility is that the reference is to Chaucer’s declining health, which finds some support in the near-total absence of official functions that he seems to have fulfilled in the final decade of his life and his inability to make real headway with the completion of the Canterbury Tales. Still, it may all have been good fun, for either of them, to make amical snide remarks about one another at this stage of their writing careers. Such sparring could have been stimulating and would have added spice to their dealings with their literary entourage, who may well have been the ultimate inspiration for it all. Whatever the exact situation or the exact stimulus, there evidently was, as we shall see borne out in the following chapters, a moment when Gower managed to really spur Chaucer into action. One of the pinpricks contributing to this is found in the remark about Chaucer’s “songs and ditties”. In its true perspective this is comparable to, say, praising Shakespeare for producing some interesting light verse in total disregard of his dramatic oeuvre. Once we are prepared to recognize this note of disparagement, we have a good key to the entire vein of the accolade. Gower is implicitly exalting his own achievement at Chaucer’s expense, though his motive is not necessarily a selfish or nasty one. He effects this by creating a negative contrast along classically simple lines. Chaucer is made out to be the pro-

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verbial grasshopper. All songs and merry tunes “in the floures of his youthe”, he has failed to prepare for the winter of his years. Now that he is growing old, the only monument to his genius are the charming trifles that he wrote when he was young and foolish. For all their quality and quantity they lack body. Gower, as the industrious one, warns him of the winter ahead and holds himself up as the proper example. It is high time for Chaucer to leave frivolity behind and make amends by turning to something more lasting and better befitting his age. How he should go about this is kindly shown by Gower. He need only let himself be guided by the Confessio Amantis, which happens to possess the very substance that is wanting in his songs and ditties and is the exact sort of mature work that is required. Upon reflection, the thing that stands out particularly is Gower’s implicit claim to have surpassed his rival as the poet of love par excellence. Nothing in Chaucer’s prolific oeuvre can compete with the Confessio Amantis. Whereas Gower has passed his master test, Chaucer must still come up with his. This reduces him to little more than an apprentice, one whose task of producing a masterpiece is bound to the rules and the example set by his taskmaster Gower. Thus, what Gower’s accolade really comes down to is a provocation or, better, a challenge to a literary combat. Having outdone Chaucer with a huge link-andframe story (some 30,000 lines!), he invites his friend and rival to improve upon this – on his terms and on his speciality. Gower’s Challenge and the Legend of Good Women It is plain from the way things are phrased that Gower calls for Chaucer to come up with a final work that is not only comparable to his but also something along the same basic lines. This is the inference to be drawn from the fact that Gower equates the testament of love with a schrift (= Lover’s Shrift = Confessio Amantis) like his own. As these terms are reversible, Amans’ confession also being Gower’s courtly testament in the final reckoning, even if this is literary pretence, we cannot fail to conclude that the work which he is stipulating paraphrases the title of his own work. That this is truly a call for something imitative is also suggested by his use of testament of love. As I have indicated, the name is taken from a contemporary work by Thomas Usk, which unfortunately has come down to us in a single and very corrupt version, ironically owing its survival to Gower’s use

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of this very title. Yet not only does this book lean heavily on Chaucer as a source but it is also imitative in the sense that, as Allen Shoaf writes, it is in a great many ways an extension of the argument in Chaucer’s House of Fame.11 Nor are Gower’s words innocuous in any sense. Usk, as one of the Brembre faction, was indicted of treason by the Merciless Parliament of 1388.12 He was executed with stunning barbarity: “After being drawn and quartered, he was cut down while still alive and beheaded with agonizing slowness; records show that it took nearly thirty strokes of the sword”.13 In this connection, it should be re-emphasized that it is generally accepted that Usk moved in circles close to Chaucer. In fact, Pynkhurst’s involvement in the Mercers’ petition may mean that Chaucer’s office was closer to Brembre and Usk than it is often assumed.14 Thus – and this is significant – Gower’s choice of words, coming little more than a year after the event and perhaps not even that,15 is not to be dismissed as a light-hearted little quip or mere slip of the pen. It is a calculated remark, with nasty overtones. It not only reminds Chaucer of the nearness of death but also of the fate of writers with a dangerous allegiance to a weak King, for Usk and the circle to which he belonged were staunch supporters of Richard II.16 At the same time it is implied that, so far, he has not even come up to the standard of his feeblest imitators, let alone Gower and his Confessio. And perhaps worth noting most of all is the competitive spirit which speaks from this, thus leaving little doubt that this is truly an invitation to literary combat. What we should also keep in mind is that we virtually catch Gower here in the act of transferring his allegiance from Richard to Gaunt’s son Henry, the later Henry IV. The testament of love remark shows in what direction he was leaning, as does the Latin dedication to Henry in eight of the early manuscripts belonging to the first redac11 R. Allen Shoaf, ed. Thomas Usk. The Testament of Love (Kalamazoo MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1998), p 25 note 44. 12 Pearsall, p 201; Fisher, p 62. 13 John Leyerle, “Thomas Usk”, in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer (New York: Scribner, 1982-89), vol 12, pp 333-35, at 334. 14 I owe this observation to a remark by Jeremy Smith. 15 There is no saying when exactly Gower composed the seventeen lines of his challenge. Our terminus a quo is 1388, the time of Usk’s death, while at the latest they were included at the approximate time when the first version was finished in 1390. 16 Pearsall, p 201.

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tion. Just a few months after this, or at most a year, all lines to Richard and Chaucer were removed, soon to be replaced by a glowing address to Henry, though this may be an interpolation stemming from the time of the latter’s seizure of the Crown, as Terry Jones cum suis propose in “Who Murdered Chaucer?”17 From Gower’s juxtaposition of his own Confessio and Chaucer’s confession-to-be it is a likely notion that, assuming that he knew on what writing Chaucer was engaged, the work he had in mind was the Legend of Good Women rather than the Canterbury Tales. It is the obvious choice. Here we have a love vision much reminiscent of Gower’s and leading up to a similar string of tales. As Fisher sums up: The points of direct similarity […] are 1) the appearance of the king and queen of love; 2) general details of setting and dress such as the “swote pleine”, the fiery darts, the pearl crowns, the company of lovers; 3) the displeasure of the king of love with the poets; 4) the intercession of the queen of love; and 5) her assignment of a confession or penance which provides motivation for a collection of stories.18

To this he adds, a few pages later, that “the love vision as the starting point for a collection of tales remains unique [and] so does also the religious framework for a collection of secular love stories”.19 What he fails to say is that the two works also share seven heroines dealt with in the shape of actual tales. He further points out that the two works were begun at the same time of 1386/87 and feels that they were both suggested by Richard and Anne during a boating party.20 If this sounds a bit fanciful, let it be noted that, while history is silent upon Chaucer here, this is what Gower does record for himself: In Temse whan it was flowende As I be bote cam rowende, So as fortune hir tyme sette, My liege lord par chaunce I mette; And so befel, as I cam nyh, Out of my bot, whan he me syh, He bad me come in to his barge. And whan I was with him at large, 17

Jones, pp 98-103. Fisher, p 240. 19 Fisher, p 242. 20 Fisher, p 240. He actually says “written”, but this is plainly a slip of the pen. 18

Towards Composing a Testament of Love | 55 Amonges othre thinges seid He hath this charge upon me leid, And bad me doo my besynesse That to his hihe worthinesse Som newe thing I sholde boke, That he himself it mihte loke After the forme of my writynge. And thus upon his comandynge Myn herte is wel the more glad To write so as he me bad. [ConfAm, 39-56]

On Chaucer’s part, it may be added that, beyond the love vision, the Legend is regarded as being none too clear as to the number of good women whom it is supposed to be about. Its alternative title, as found in Benson’s edition of the Retraction, is “the book of the xxv. Ladies”, but, to judge by the text of its G-Prologue (line 186), which specifically mentions the figure “nynteen”, and Lydgate’s remark on the subject, this is probably a scribal misreading of “xix. Ladies”.21 Similarly, when Fisher writes, “Alceste and the god of love are followed at once by nineteen women, presumably intended to be the women in the balade Hyd, Absalon, although the figures do not work out”,22 he slightly misrepresents things. It is the god of love, not Alceste and the god of love, who is followed by nineteen ladies. Thus the figures do work out all right. It is the exact ladies involved who pose a problem, not their number: while the balade includes Alceste, it excludes Philomela, who is one of the nine to actually have a tale of their own in the uncompleted Legend. Several of these exemplary women are ones whom we also come across in Gower’s book and who, like Gower’s ladies, are chiefly based on Ovid’s Heroides.23 Chaucer does not seem to have done much – if any – work on them after his initial efforts. Gower’s admonition that it is high time for Chaucer to come up with his testament of 21 Benson, pp 965 and especially 1179. Various numbers occur in the manuscripts, but the figure 19 seems most likely, both on the authority of Chaucer’s disciple Lydgate who says that the plan was for 19 ladies (Benson, p 1060), of the Prologue (F: 283, G:186) and that of the actual number of ladies referred to in the balade Hyd, Absalon. Benson’s retention of XXV in the Retraction is an editorial choice, evidently stemming from his conviction that Chaucer meant to expand the Legend rather than shelve it (Benson, p 1060). In the light of what we know of Chaucer’s efforts on the Legend this is not very plausible and is further contradicted by our findings below. 22 Fisher, p 239. 23 Benson, p 1059; Fisher, p 285.

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love may well be taken to refer to the latter’s flagging efforts on the Legend. This is at least what Fisher concludes, and it is difficult not to agree with him: “What is important about these lines [i.e. the admonition], however, is that they imply that Chaucer was still supposed to get on with his task” – the task, that is, of completing the Legend.24 If we, from our distant perspective, see in what direction Gower’s words may be taken to point, can we suppose Chaucer to have missed out on this? The answer is, of course, that we cannot and that he did not. It is a subject that he addresses in the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale. What is more, Lady Fortune has been gracious here and bequeathed us a single surviving manuscript, now Cambridge UL MS Gg.iv.27, which shows that Chaucer did actually pick up work on the Legend some years after the original bout of writing. Its Prologue, generally accepted as a later rewriting and known as the GPrologue, the original one being the so-called F-Prologue, shows the tidying hand of Chaucer weeding out some of the too flowery and courtly passages. The evidence is, however, that beyond the rewriting which this involved he desisted and let the Legend rest. In fact, it is even supposed that he used it as a mining source and that tales originally planned for it, such as the Physician’s Tale, were later shifted to the Canterbury effort. The date for this rewriting is given as 1394 or possibly later, by dint of its exclusion of the earlier reference to Queen Anne, who died in that year.25 There are grounds for doubting this dating, to which we shall turn later. Briefly, what is at issue here is that datings in the Canterbury field tend to be conjectural and shaky. To base one upon the failure to mention Anne is quite acceptable. The inference that this is due to her death is not. There are other reasons imaginable, as good or better, for Chaucer to have left out the reference. It is important here to recognize this element of uncertainty, as it crops up in many places where Chaucer scholarship has attempted and is still attempting to pin down specific dates. Be this as it may, the rewriting itself – whatever its exact date – allows itself to be read as good evidence that Chaucer had understood the direction of Gower’s challenge and actually made a serious attempt to adapt the Legend to Gower’s suggestion. The link with Gower is generally accepted by the critics, who feel that the G-Pro24 25

Fisher, p 250. Benson, p 1060.

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logue’s replacement of “other wrecches” by “olde foles” is intended as a friendly dig at Gower in reply to his remark about Chaucer’s age at the end of the Confessio. This is an attractive notion, particularly as the senex amans seems to make his appearance here. Further reference to Gower may reside in the “Som men wolde seyn” remarks in lines 1009 and 1086, as pointed out long ago by Thomas Tyrwhitt.26 Chaucer’s use of “men” may well be taken to point to Gower and Trevet alike, since the matters referred to are treated by both. However, as “Som men sein” and like formulations are characteristically Gowerian nonce phrases that are found all over the Confessio, Robinson is probably right when he remarks that “there seems to be more point in an allusion to Gower, particularly in view of the supposed fling at him in the Introduction”.27 Something else to be noted here is the fact that, in full compliance with Gower’s reference to Chaucer’s advanced age and Venus’ judgement of Gower, Chaucer eliminated the conventional love poses that are found in the F-Prologue and replaced them by remarks about his own age and unsuitedness for love.28 Also, in keeping with Gower’s challenge and echoing it, the G-Prologue includes a revised listing of his literary work, both major works and light verse, to which he added the new lines Whil he was yong, he kepte youre [i.e. Amor’s] estat; I not [know not] wher he be now a renegat. [G-Prol, 400-01]

It is not difficult to read this interpolation as a reaction to Gower’s reference to his production of love songs “in the floures of his youthe” and the need to come up with a shrift now that he is old. The original love vision in the Prologue is a piece of writing that is well-suited for a reaction to Gower’s challenge and the inclusion of the above two lines appears to indicate that Chaucer was aware of this. The god of love’s misdirected anger at Chaucer’s love writings provides an ironical counterpoint to Venus’ discharge of the prolific Gower, just as Alceste’s defence of Chaucer’s productivity in the field of love is readable as a subtle correction of Venus’ judgement. Note, 26

Benson, p 1064 note G 315. Thomas Tyrwhitt, The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer (2nd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon P, 1798), p 91. 27 Robinson, p 696 note 1009. 28 Fisher, p 240; Tyrwhitt, p 91; Robinson, p 696 note 1009.

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too, how in a direct reversal of Venus’ words it is Chaucer’s major work that gets dealt with first before allowing the existence of “many an ympne for your halydayes,/ That highten balades, roundeles, vyrelayes” [F-Prol, 422-23; G-Prol, 410-11]. A notable point is also that it is not his conduct as a courtly lover, which is the case with Gower in his Amans persona, but as a love writer which is called into question. We find this same switch from the personal to the professional when next we turn to the Canterbury Tales. If it should be felt that the fit with Gower’s salutation is rather uncanny for at least the earlier F-Prologue and much too good for coincidence, this is something that allows itself to be resolved by recourse to Fisher’s proposal that the poets were each asked by the royal couple to come up with a similar pentitential work of courtly love. If so, this could well have included a special set of rules. Alternatively, Chaucer may have been forewarned by Gower as to what to expect and taken his measures accordingly. The rewriting of the Legend itself was evidently not fed by any new inspiration and work was soon stopped. Chaucer’s discontinuation of further revision suggests that this was a route which he decided to discard as insufficiently viable and challenging. We find this in Robinson.29 Benson, however, appears to feel that Chaucer intended to continue work on it,30 even if this is not borne out by any fact. To judge by the evidence, no work was done on it from about the time of the Man of Law’s Prologue. Fisher considers it easily understood that, for all the brilliancy of the revised Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, Chaucer “should tire, and his critical sense should rebel, at the thought of plodding through all the monotonously similar series he had been assigned”.31 He is overstating if not misreading things here: the medieval public appears to have been quite appreciative of moral tales.32 Good religious stories were widely appreciated. In fact, Robert Worth Frank’s excursus makes short shrift of the dullness notion and convincingly demonstrates that whatever caused Chaucer to put aside the Legend it was not boredom.33 29

Robinson, p 482. Benson, pp 587-88, 1059-60. 31 Fisher, p 250. 32 Benson, p 1060. The great popularity of the Prick of Conscience is a case in point. 33 Robert Worth Frank Jr, Chaucer and The Legend of Good Women (Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1972), pp 189-210. 30

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The really interesting aspect, however, is the implication of the rewriting as such and his abandonment of it in favour of an entirely new direction, which is that Chaucer had actually fallen in with Gower’s invitation to a literary duel. In fact, all the evidence to come is that he must have been much taken with the idea and hugely enjoyed himself constructing a counter-Confessio, including a reply to the seventeen-line challenge which he uses to put paid to Gower on all the major points of his vaunted achievement. For this he now turned to the Canterbury Tales, the work on which he was engaged at the time of the challenge, as far more interesting and worthy of his capacities than the Legend. This was, after all, in the light of its announced design in the General Prologue, to be his magnum opus and a repository of as many tales as Gower’s Confessio. What better place than this, then, to repay Gower, particularly as the phrasing of the challenge had failed to preclude a countermove from this direction? Note the mischievous irony of this step. Instead of getting back at Gower through the medium of a similar courtly dream vision, as in the Legend, he opted for its utter antithesis: the tales of the raucous Canterbury pilgrims, almost all of them realistically rooted in the experience of the late fourteenth-century here-and-now. A greater contrast is hardly thinkable. Note, too, that the device to set the Canterbury Tales going is a story-telling contest, thus ironically reflecting Chaucer’s personal situation. Here, too, may lie a reason contributing to the state of the Legend: what if Chaucer had decided to shelve it, not just because his attention was now focused on the Canterbury Tales but because he saw it as a potential source of tales for future use in this writing venture? We have good reason to believe that it was so used in at least one case. Also, as the outcome shows, the Tales were a much more amenable vehicle for adapting his writings to Gower’s terms. A factor adding to this, no doubt, is the attraction of a counter-attack coming from a totally unexpected direction. What could be further from anyone’s mind than a down-to-earth collection of estates satire to deal with such exalted matters as a courtly love debate? And there were further advantages. Among other things, just the addition of a simple literary device in the shape of the Retraction would be enough to turn them formally into the testament that he had been asked to produce.

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The Background of the Challenge At this point, it is a fair question to ask what should have moved Gower to come up with a challenge in the first place. Superficially, he may simply have been motivated by a sense of his own superior achievement. After all, he had outdone a Chaucer who may well have been bogged down by his daunting task of producing a collection of at least eighty tales or more and who was similarly wrestling with his Legend. This suggests self-satisfaction and a whiff of malice as his motive which makes him altogether human yet sits uneasily with the familiar notion of a “moral Gower” friendly to Chaucer. Fisher, who does not find any challenge here, reads Gower’s words as a warm admonition. As he sees it, Chaucer shocked Gower with his first draft of the Canterbury Tales (Fragment I/Group A) and that, out of deference, he broke off the Cook’s Tale and switched to something more to his friend’s liking.34 What ought to be specially worth noting here is that, like me, Fisher identifies the Legend of Good Women as the work that Gower drives at but the Canterbury Tales as the one that Chaucer ultimately picked for his answer. Fisher’s interpretation of Venus’ words – the challenge – is too kind on Gower. Rather, they read as a matter of self-congratulation and deliberate contrast to Chaucer’s so far unfelicitous Legend and perhaps his Canterbury Tales as well. Admittedly, this may all have been a matter of posturing in a context whereby he sought to get Chaucer back on the right track. In fact, it would not come as a surprise if this were all relatable to audience pressure and expectations or even set into motion by the royals themselves, as we have seen. Conversely, this could be a matter of audience manipulation on the part of two authors who knew their business and were intent upon keeping their following properly entertained. There is, however, no suggestion of a scandalized Gower to be found in any of the lines referring to Chaucer, whereas, in most curious contrast, we find the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, as Chaucer’s rebuttal, to be quite vocal about Gower’s alleged immorality.35 Where Fisher argues deference to Gower’s objections, my Chaucer is not such a compliant type. Retaliation is a recurrent motif 34

Fisher, pp 6, 207. An excellent motive for the challenge crops up in Chapter Three, where we discuss Chaucer’s portrayal of the Sergeant of the Law. 35

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in his tales, a device that he applies again and again, to his own evident satisfaction. It must certainly be obvious to anyone that Chaucer’s reply to Gower in his Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, what with its condemnation of certain tales, even if garbled by the Man of Law, cannot by any count be considered to be the act of deference that Fisher claims it to be. A considerable element of competitiveness seems to have slipped in. Yet to read the situation as a fallingout, as earlier scholars used to do, is a matter that is difficult to resolve at present.36 Meanwhile and in the absence of any significant selfcongratulatory passage, which may be related to all sort of factors ranging from the incomplete state of the Tales to a later stage of revision, the safest course is to assume for the time being that what we are basically dealing with here is a battle of writing wits, a crossing of rival pens that took place at Gower’s instigation. As such, it may well have been a mock battle, a literary game fought at the instigation of a court audience in perennial search of new entertainment. The type of court game that is proposed here would have come close to what is found a century or so later in Scotland: the “noble” art of flyting. The OED defines this as “a kind of contest practised by the Scottish poets of the sixteenth century, in which two persons assailed each other alternately with tirades of abusive”.37 Best known, perhaps, is Dunbar’s Flyting with his compatriot Walter Kennedy. It is basically understood that such literary play was “a collaborative game between two poets”, but, as in the case of Dunbar and Kennedy, “strong animosities, cultural and personal” could also be involved. Also, while many flyting poems “openly name names […], others produce a similar impression of attacking specific individuals, even though no names occur”.38 With one important exception, all of these elements are also found in the Chaucer-Gower situation. What is wanting is the actual abuse, for their tone is courtly, yet the snide efforts at undercutting one another, in word and in actual demonstration, qualify as an excellent forerunner of the type, conforming well with Bawcutt’s comparison of the genre with “the tournament [as] a good contemporary example of such aggressive play”.39 The origin of such invective verse and contests is not clear, at least where the Scottish literary scene is 36

Fisher, pp 1-36, passim; Benson, p 854. The association with flyting was pointed out to me by Roderick Lyall. 38 Priscilla Bawcutt, Dunbar the Makar (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1992), pp 226, 241. 39 Bawcutt, p 226. 37

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concerned, but there are early models in areas as distant as Iceland, Provence and even the Arab world. Yet to find something similar so close to home and near in time is obviously food for thought. It could be argued that Chaucer never went so far as to announce publicly that he had fallen in with Gower’s challenge, being satisfied to come up with his own improvement of Gower in a purely private contest and simply leaving any recognition of what he had been doing up to his public’s power of discernment. Upon consideration, however, this seems rather shortsighted. It is a reader’s argument but not something that is applicable to an audience – and I mean this literally, as a listening public – familiar with such performers as Chaucer and Gower and their ways of sly innuendo. There is just a hair’s breadth difference between a court game and a private contest which was nevertheless fought out in the open. Neither of these would have escaped their public, so far as it is possible for anyone to judge. For this reason I shall make no difference between these two options in the pages to come, unless there should be some special argument or evidence in favour of one or the other. Yet, if there was a court game, its actual context must remain speculation. My best guess is that Gower, being first to complete his work, was given pride of place and allowed to inititate the contest, meaning that he needed do no more than present his Confessio. This could have taken the shape of a presentation to a listening public. Given the great length of the book, this may have been toned down to a selection of highlights, which is arguably supported by the fact that Chaucer’s prime response is similarly limited to just a few tales. Then it would have been Chaucer’s turn to produce in, say, twelve-monthand-a-day a proper response, which may have been in the shape of instalments but could also have been done in a single session. Of course this also calls for a listening public, even if it seems to me that as a courtier Chaucer may have had some advantages that Gower wanted. One thing that has crossed my mind is that a fourteenthcentury court may not have lacked something like a bulletin board (or is this too anachronistic a thought?) and that this would have enabled him to keep people entertainingly posted on the progress of his duel. Before going on, it may be a good idea to try and define what Gower’s call for a Testament of Love comes down to. Since he makes it clear that it should be a shrift like his own Confessio, it should include such characteristic elements as confession and sins confessed to,

Towards Composing a Testament of Love | 63

as well as sermonizing supported by remedial sermon exempla, preferably with both a secular and a spiritual application – as is the observable situation in the Confessio Amantis. All this should be set to a theme of love. And, of course, it ought to be a testament of sorts. In a stricter interpretation, whereby the challenge is read as an invitation to come up with a literal improvement, the sins involved should be extended to include all the Seven Deadly ones, there should be figurants similar to Amans (and a senex Amans, at that), Genius and Venus, and the love theme ought to include courtly love. Subjects which should perhaps also be involved are natural law – kinde – vs reason, the “honeste love” of chaste marriage, clerical abuses, and the just wielding of power and application of the law by royal authority, for these are important threads running through much of Gower’s book.40 Direct borrowing would be a natural thing to expect, as would be a linear structure to underlie the various tales. This should basically suffice, however many further sophisticated points it is possible to make on the design and contents of the Confessio. The Retraction and the Parson’s Tale In order to turn the Canterbury Tales into the required testament, a little sleight of hand may have served as Chaucer’s immediate, formal notice of engagement and delineation of his chosen battleground. This was the affixation of an actual literary testament, the Retraction(s) or Retractation(s), which constitutes a literal compliance with Gower’s call for a testament. Strictly speaking, the love element is outwardly lacking, but we know that this crops up in several places in the Canterbury Tales. Yet, demonstrably, the Retraction follows the familiar antithesis of sin and virtue or cupiditas vs caritas, the latter of which may surely be accounted love in its optimal form: from actual retraction [1084-87] to positive affirmation of Christian love [108891]. As such, it may easily be qualified as a testamentum caritatis – a testament of love, and love of a type superior to Gower’s amor. What the Retraction also demonstrates is the very sort of retaliatory literalness which Chaucer also applies in his pilgrims’ quarrels. 40

Denise N. Baker, ‘The Priesthood of Genius: A Study in the Medieval Tradition’ in: Peter Nicholson ed. Gower’s Confessio Amantis: A Critical Anthology (Cambridge: Brewer, 1991): 143-57, at 153-57; John Lawlor, ‘Gower’s Honeste Love’ in: Lawlor, 107-21, at 115ff.

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In this respect, a particularly telling little detail is the mischievous presence in the Retraction of the line and many a song and many a leccherous lay,

recalling Gower’s jibe at his early verses in celebration of Venus.41 With its sudden recurrence of Chaucer’s wonted pentameter and its ironical echo of Gower’s deprecation of his early poetry, this is a piece of levity that can hardly be taken as a serious reference to his past work. It is a typically Chaucerian signature, showing that, deathbed or not, neither his capacity for self-depreciating irony nor his liking for a bit of knuckle-rapping ever flagged. Appropriately, the line further looks like a direct echo from Chaucer’s listing of his works in the Legend’s Prologue, a passage whose easy referability to Gower we have already noted: He hath mad many a lay and many a thyng. [G-Prol, 420]42

In fact, if we accept this echo as underlying the present line in the Retraction, which seems unescapable to me, the implication is that it was written very soon after his latest work on the Legend, as it seems to be a golden rule with Chaucer for echoes from his most recent work to crop up in his new writings. This is something well in line with the argument of this study. Let us further recognize that the Retraction ends upon a note whereby Christ, Mary and all the saints are asked to grant Chaucer the “grace of verray penitence, confessioun and satisfaccioun to doon in this present lyf”. While naturally referring back to the application of the Parson’s Tale, these three equally naturally call to mind what the Confessio Amantis is all about. The deathbed notion – even though traditionally entertained – is probably a fiction. There is no evidence to support it. If anything, the Retraction is a rather conventional, formal revocation of a kind that we find with various contemporary writers, among whom Boccaccio is perhaps the most noteworthy instance. It is late, in the sense that it 41

Pearsall, p 269, is the one to point out this sudden incursion of Chaucer’s metre. The F-Prologue also has this line at 430, with two slight spelling differences. However, as this prologue probably dates from around the same time as the inception of the Canterbury Tales, it is a virtual impossibility that its writing inspired the Retraction, there being no Tales to retract yet. Hence, my choice for the G-Prologue. 42

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probably belongs to the early ’nineties rather than the ’eighties but there is certainly no reason to regard it as Chaucer’s ultimate piece of writing.43 No doubt it is seriously meant to serve its ostensible purpose. When, at the same time, it includes room for a little joke at both Gower’s expense and his own, with a suggestion of a writing date around 1390, the implication is that these lines were not written at any time of spiritual extremity. Significantly, the Retraction is inseparably linked in the manuscripts to the Parson’s Tale, with the exception of those cases where final leaves are absent as a result of the wear and tear of intensive handling. Doubtless they were jointly added to the Canterbury Tales and the reason for this is easily understood in the light of Gower’s challenge. Together they introduce three of its essential elements, to wit, the formal presence of a testament and of a treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins which is combined with a manual of confession and turns the Parson into a father confessor to the entire Canterbury fellowship. Though differently incorporated, they correspond remarkably well with the Confessio and its basic framework. Scholars have commented on the Parson’s ideosyncratic combination of a treatise on sin and a manual of confession but this is merely a matter of their unfamiliarity with its theological dimension, for such combinations were actually quite common at the time.44 What is ideosyncratic is their literary application: at this time and place this is found with Gower and Chaucer only, a point that should weigh heavily in favour of my argument. Interestingly, David Lawton, who attributes the placement of the Parson’s Tale to a compiler who may or may not have been Chaucer, specifically mentions the Confessio as its prime model and draws a conclusion at this point that provides a telling parallel with Chaucer: 43 Benson takes the Retraction to mean, without any doubt, “that, unfinished, unpolished and incomplete as The Canterbury Tales may be, Chaucer is finished with it” (Benson, p 22). I do not think that it means anything of the kind. Its presence is the natural application of the Parson’s Tale. As Pearsall says, it “is Chaucer’s own historical response to the call for penitence, and penitence now, which is the imperative logic of the Parson’s treatise. […] It is Chaucer’s own act of satisfaction” (p 269). Benson’s assumption here is that in writing the concluding pieces for the Canterbury Tales Chaucer had effectively concluded work on the whole venture, while in actual fact the sole conclusion to be drawn here is that he had simply come up with a good ending. It presupposes that Chaucer went about his business on an A-to-Z basis, never looking back, which seems open to serious doubt to me. 44 Benson, pp 956-57; Robinson, pp 765-66.

66 | Towards Composing a Testament of Love Of course, the confession is a confession to Genius, priest of Venus; but the lover’s realization, at the end of the Confessio, that he is too old for carnal love and should turn his thoughts to love of (the Christian) God means that, in the long run, the mock penitential structure of the work leads to a genuine Christian act of penance.45

This is not to say that I accept Lawton’s conclusion. Amans’ final turn to love of God as the better choice is not only clichéd but facile and opportunistic, having been arrived at only after his rejection by Venus and not as the outcome of any soul-searching. We should also note, as a fourth element and one that again mirrors the Confessio, that the Parson’s Tale is fundamentally an extended, non-standard sermon that gathers in all the themes of the Canterbury Tales within one “sentence” [ParsProl, 58, 63]. Also, as Chauncey Wood pointed out not so long ago, the Parson’s emphasis on sin and penitence in what he himself twice refers to as a “meditacioun” very much calls to mind Gower’s Mirour de l’omme.46 “The name given the Mirour on Gower’s tombstone [sic], Speculum meditationis [sic], similarly reminds us that sin, its consequences and its cures, is an appropriate subject for meditation”. His contention that the Parson’s Tale is the closest that Chaucer comes to Gower in the Canterbury Tales is excellent support of the present argument.47 A fifth and final point is the Parson’s discussion, not always strictly necessary in terms of his subject matter, of the abuses of the age. Chief among these is his reproof of the “harde lordshipes” [752] and the thraldom that they impose - a subject dear to Gower’s heart. As an answer to Gower’s challenge, the Parson’s Tale is of course far less exciting than the Confessio. But it is superior in the sense that it joins a real treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins to a real manual of confession in order to provide Chaucer’s answer. The Confessio Amantis is a work that, in a theological sense, deals with the matter of sin on the basis of a greatly condensed scheme and, at least 45

Lawton: 18. Chauncey Wood, ‘Chaucer’s Most “Gowerian” Tale’ in R.F. Yeager ed., Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange (Victoria: English Literary Studies, 1991): 75-84. The sics refer to the fact that there is no tombstone but a wooden effigy instead, which lies in state in a richly-decorated niche of one of the walls of Southwark Cathedral, and the book’s title there reads Speculum Meditantis. 47 Wood also finds (81), citing Fisher (p 131), that the Parson’s Tale is least Gowerian in its “treatment of sacramental confession as a major theme”. In answer to this, the reader is referred to Chapters 5 and 7. 46

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outwardly, a predominantly courtly reading at that, which leaves it open to doubts on its sincerity. Technically, too, the inclusion of the Parson’s Tale is a felicitous step. A sin-and-confession rewriting of the collection along Gower’s lines might have been a feasible undertaking (allowing that all this happened in the early years of the Canterbury Tales), yet hardly the demonstration of writing superiority that Chaucer must been aiming at. The obvious weak point of the frame of the Confessio and works like it, as Strohm notes, is that they “depend either on single tellers or a group of tellers from a single station of life, leaving us with an impression of stylistic evenness and homogeneity of voice and content”.48 This even holds good for Boccaccio’s Decamerone and it is also something that we see at work in the Legend of Good Women. The set-up of the Canterbury Tales, on the other hand, offers room for a wide range of voices and social perspectives49 and Chaucer would have been ill-advised to give up such a formula for success. The solution provided by the Parson’s Tale and the Retraction, on the other hand, is economical along a wide range. It keeps alive the many voices that come before, reflecting and illuminating the multiple facets of late fourteenth-century life, which, to a large extent, is the essence of Chaucer’s effort. At the same time it is an effective way of dealing with the subject of confession, the Deadly Sins and their remedies. In some measure, the friction between the Confessio and the Canterbury Tales is also related to what we must suppose, either by reference to records or deduction from what they wrote, to have been Gower’s and Chaucer’s social stance on the condition of England in their time, which – in a word – was appalling. Gower’s choice was always a thoroughly conservative one, in favour of strong and effective government as his solution to the growing problems in the land. We hear this repeated time and again in his writings. Chaucer, on the other hand, may have been like-minded in many respects, but is generally more indirect. Also, as Strohm notes, Chaucer’s representation of his world is rather more centrifugal, both in his awareness of a society on the brink of new developments and the reflection of this in the Tales.50 A further difference that is at the same time indicative of very similar 48

Paul Strohm, ‘Form and Social Statement in Confessio Amantis and The Canterbury Tales’, SAC 1 (1979): 17-40, at 33-34. 49 Something similar is pointed out by Strohm, ‘Form’: 34. 50 Strohm, ‘Form’: 32.

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interests has been remarked upon by Larry Scanlon. He argues forcefully that both Chaucer and Gower were seeking to establish themselves as lay auctoritates on their own chosen ground: Chaucer on ecclesiastical matters and Gower on political ones.51 To return to the Parson’s Tale and the Retraction: it is perfectly possible to see them as a skeleton key to the Tales at large, applicable in theory to all of the pilgrims and the tales that they tell. The qualification “in theory” is used advisedly. It is all very well to add such a key but this can only be effective as long as the preceding tales and their tellers are capable of being unlocked by it. More simply, the tales needed to fit or be made to fit into the Parson’s salvational scheme in order to be worthy of rivalling the Confessio on the subjects of confession, virtue and vice. Now this cannot in itself have been a great problem: all of life is subject to virtue and vice in the medieval view as we find it with the Parson, and literature has always been attracted to its more risqué aspects. While Chaucer is generally quite direct on this point, in the sense that the sin or virtue involved is thematically relevant, Gower’s exempla in the Confessio show from what unexpected angles in his tales the moral could be drawn: anything goes. Also, much of the estates satire in the General Prologue is in the direction of human weaknesses and sin and likely to have been so from the very first. In the final analysis, where and whenever change was called for, there were always the links – the introductions, prologues and epilogues to the tales – which could be adapted without too much of a problem and serve up the necessary solutions. A different point is the question whether Chaucer’s public would have been able to appreciate that the Parson’s sermon served such a function. On the whole, the answer ought to be affirmative. “Chaucer always wrote for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear”, Rodney Delasanta notes. “Medieval readers were in the habit of reading intertextually”, Helen Cooper adds, a remark that also ought to apply to a listening public.52 Of course, there must have been those who missed the Parson’s sentence entirely, but we must deem a large part of Chaucer’s readers/listeners to have been among the better51

Scanlon, pp 3-26, 137-45, 245-297. Rodney Delasanta, ‘And of Great Reverence: Chaucer’s Man of Law’, ChauR 7 (1971): 288-310, at 288. Helen Cooper, The Structure of the Canterbury Tales (London: Duckworth, 1983), p 3.

52

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educated. Also, we must assume them to have been more deeply steeped and better versed and – most of all – more interested in religious matters than we generally are. This is still the Age of Belief that we are dealing with and we should not underestimate the pervasiveness of religion as it was experienced at the time, particularly in the light of the terrible blights of the latter half of the century. Then, it was an accepted requirement in the ars, or artes, praedicandi for sermons to be so constructed that they targeted both the simple and the learned and provided multiple levels “based on individual ability to fathom the speaker’s message”.53 While actual practice will often have been different, the composition of Chaucer’s public ought to be sufficient guarantee that the Parson’s emphasis on the application of his tale to the pilgrims’ “feeste” would not have escaped them. A mistake not to be made is to take the Parson’s Tale for Chaucer’s answer. Its identification as a skeleton key largely captures its function. It is the means of unlocking the true meaning – sentence, in Chaucer’s terms – of the Tales. Cornerstone of his true reply would be another good definition. This is also why the tale lacks any sense of Chaucer outdoing Gower, even if its placement is a neater solution than the rigid corset of confession alternating with remedial tales that somewhat stifles the overall effect of the Confessio. It represents, as it were, Chaucer’s equivalent of the Confessio’s structure rather than its tale contents. Thus, if the Canterbury Tales or at least some of them were to be a properly effective answer, surpassing Gower on his own chosen ground, he needed to come up with something clever that referred to the Confessio in an unmistakable fashion. For this reason and on the basis of the chapters to come, we ought to take the Parson’s Tale as, probably, Chaucer’s prime reaction to Gower’s challenge. This is well-borne out by the fact that two of the three tales which make up his basic Testament of Love, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, are textually indebted to it in a fashion not shared by any of the other tales. It is a recurrent phenomenon in Chaucer that echoes from recent work on philosophical and religious tracts crop up in texts written soon after. Yet it is also plausible that at an early stage Chaucer must have realized that the Parson’s Tale was unsuited for presentation to a live audience, which may be part of the reason why it was relegated to 53

Robert L. Kindrick, Henryson and the Medieval Arts of Rhetoric (New York/London: Garland, 1993), p 21,and pp 20-27 generally.

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its final position and may also account for the inclusion of the Man of Law’s Tale, to serve as a substitute for the Parson’s remedia against sin. All the same, it remains a practical key to unriddling the three tales which make up the Testament of Love and this is a part that it fulfils admirably. Yet by dint of its inclusion it serves the same function with respect to all the other tales as well. It seems to me, therefore, that its concluding role in the Canterbury Tales, as emphasized by the Retraction’s presence, indicates that it was not included until Chaucer was satisfied with his answer. This is not to say that the nature of the Parson’s Tale is without puzzling aspects of its own. As Larry Scanlon points out, the narrative voice is thoroughly conservative, supportive of the status quo along institutional lines and nowhere approaches interpretations of Chaucer as a religious liberal, let be an innovative thinker.54 This may be partly because the Parson’s Tale serves as Chaucer’s reaction to Gower and thus may have been meant to outdo the latter in morality, which goes some way to account for its stuffy nature. While this leaves some room for assuming a privately milder Chaucer, it nevertheless looks as if Scanlon is largely right about this. It seems to me that, wherever one wishes to place Chaucer in the ecclesiastical spectrum, the voice of the Parson’s Tale bears the stamp of his approval. To our best knowledge this tale is his own composite creation, with parts drawn from various sources, and it would be naive to assume that this does not reflect a general sense of his own belief. Whether this makes Chaucer somewhat of a religious conservative or progressive I am less sure than Scanlon, who places him in the former camp. What I do see is that the affixation of the Parson’s Tale implicitly places all of fourteenth-century life in a framework seeking to show Chaucer’s public what lies ahead of them through their own actions in much the same way that has been enacted by the pilgrims and implied by their author – eternal bliss or damnation everlasting. In support of this it may be added that as a religious text the Parson’s Tale is remarkable for its early vernacularity, perhaps even more so than his other writings, and closely skirts religious controversy and heresy, as defined by 1409 in Archbishop Thomas Arundel’s Constitutions.55 Even Gower, more conservative than Chaucer, opts in 54

Scanlon: 26. Fiona Somerset, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), pp 3-21, at 10-11.

55

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favour of English in his last major work with its analogous concern with sin and confession. Doubtless this was in order to reach a wider, lay audience who were not sufficiently versed in either French or Latin, and probably also in compliance with Richard II’s policy of stimulating the use of the English tongue. Chaucer Answers Gower The ostensible moment of Chaucer’s reply comes with the Man of Law. We deduce this from the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale and from several considerations based on the complex status of both this and the other links to the Man of Law’s Tale. It is here that we find Chaucer’s sole recorded reaction to Gower’s remarks and we must clearly take its presence to mean that this was the place and time from which he publicly set out upon putting paid to Gower. If neither his reaction nor the tale which it introduces seems to effect any great display of superiority, this is more likely to be related to how, in our times, we view his writings than to any failure on his part. There are several points involved upon which Chaucer scores with great effect and there may be others whose applicability we simply fail to recognize from our great remove.56 At this juncture, it may be a bit of a shock for some to find this study’s argument so radically confirmed, in the sense that we should actually find a recorded reaction to Gower’s challenge and find it laid down in the Canterbury Tales at that. This is the plainest sort of evidence as to the reality of both the challenge and the Canterbury Tales as the battleground selected by Chaucer. Where else but in Chaucer’s Testament of Love should we hope to expect both a reaction to and compliance with Gower’s terms? The passage where we come across this has, ever since Tyrwhitt identified it as such,57 been almost universally accepted as referring to the Confessio Amantis. With typically Chaucerian indirectness or, perhaps, deprecation of his opponent, Gower remains unmentioned, yet there is no mistaking this piece of writing as a serious rebuttal:

56

For Chaucer’s improved treatment of the tale, cf Rosemary Woolf, ‘Moral Chaucer and Kindly Gower’, in: Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell eds, J.J.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, (New York: Cornell UP, 1979): 221-45. 57 Benson, p 854; Fisher, pp 27-30. Robinson, p 690.

72 | Towards Composing a Testament of Love … But nathelees, certeyn, I kan right now no thrifty tale seyn That Chaucer, thogh he kan but lewedly On metres and on rymyng craftily, Hath seyd hem in swich Englissh as he kan Of olde tyme, as knoweth many a man; And if he have noght seyd hem, leve brother, In o book, he hath seyd hem in another. For he hath toold of loveris up and doun Mo than Ovide made of mencioun In his Episteles, that been ful olde. What sholde I telle hem, syn they been tolde? In youthe he made of Ceys and Alcione, And sitthen hath he spoken of everichone, Thise noble wyves and thise loveris eke. Whoso that wole his large volume seke, Cleped the Seintes Legende of Cupide, Ther may he seen the large woundes wyde Of Lucresse, and of Babilan Tesbee; The swerd of Dido for the false Enee; The tree of Phillis for hire Demophon; The pleinte of Dianire and of Hermyon, Of Adriane, and of Isiphilee The bareyne yle stondynge in the see The dreynte Leandre for his Erro; The teeris of Eleyne, and eek the wo Of Brixseyde, and of the, Ladomya; The crueltee of the, queene Medea, Thy litel children hangynge by the hals, For thy Jason, that was of love so fals! O Ypermystra, Penelopee, Alceste, Youre wifhood he comendeth with the beste! But certeinly no word ne writeth he Of thilke wikke ensample of Canacee, That loved hir owene brother synfully Of swiche cursed stories I sey fy! Or ellis of Tyro Appollonius, How that the cursed kyng Antiochus Birafte his doghter of hir maydenhede, That is so horrible a tale for to rede, Whan he hir threw upon the pavement. And therfore he, of ful avysement, Nolde nevere write in none of his sermons Of swiche unkynde abhomynacions, Ne I wol noon reherce, if that I may.” [IntroMLT, 45-89]

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Though wordier than Gower’s challenge this reply is constructed in much the same way, of which we should take note as it confirms our earlier reading of Gower’s words. Even the clipped lines are reminiscent of the Confessio. Complementing this, Chaucer follows him here by using one of his literary creations as his mouthpiece. For Gower’s Venus we have the Man of Law: kinde replaced by resoun, law being one of the instruments through which the rational mind curbs the urges of nature. As these two constitute a major theme of the Confessio their presence here can hardly a matter of chance. The acknowledgement follows Gower by being in two parts. The first and greater part is in praise of Chaucer’s productivity “in youthe […] and sitthen”, belittling at the same time the achievement of the Confessio Amantis. Then comes the next part with its sting: 13 lines of criticism levelled at Gower’s “bad” tales, which are rejected out of hand by the Man of Law as unfit for imitation. More specifically, Chaucer begins by having the Man of Law correct, in paraphrase almost, the foundations of Gower’s challenge. According to the Man of Law there is not a tale in the land that is not included in Chaucer’s various works, “thogh he kan but lewedly/On metres and on rymyng craftily”, with its interesting echo of the Legend’s “Al be hit that he kan nat wel endite/Yet hath he maked lewed folk delyte” [F-Prol, 41415]. This impossible claim is easily read as an ironical reflection of Gower’s own statement that “the lond fulfild is overal” with Chaucer’s songs and ditties. Nor is it difficult to see that his classification of Chaucer’s work as simple verse stands corrected here, once again in conformity with the Legend’s listing of his works. After favourably comparing the extent of Chaucer’s writings to Ovid’s Epistolae (generally known as Heroides), the Man of Law goes on to name some seventeen literary heroines of whom Chaucer wrote “in youthe [...] and sitthen”. They are to be found in the Seintes Legende of Cupide, which is an alternative designation for the Legend of Good Women. “In youthe” carries a distinct echo of Gower’s “in the floures of his youthe”, just as the device of referring to a work by an alternative name repeats what Gower does in his challenge. What Chaucer is saying here in effect is that in the heady days of his youth and in the years to follow he had anticipated and outdone all that Gower was to attempt with his Confessio Amantis. The special barb here is that we should associate the Epistolae with Gower rather than Chaucer, for they are a major source and model for the Confessio.

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It is difficult therefore not to read the above passage as an implicit claim of victory avant la lettre over John Gower. It was Chaucer who was the ant, Gower the grasshopper. We deduce this from his remark about outproducing Ovid and his Epistolae. Ovid being the poet of love par excellence, Chaucer here claims for himself the old master’s laurels, thus ironically affirming that Venus “to him in special/Above alle othre [is] most holde”. Needless to say, his reference to the Legend confirms our earlier assumption that Gower was targeting this work and that Chaucer was well aware of this and busy evolving a proper response. In fact, it shows that this poem was still very much on Chaucer’s mind, implying that the writing of the Introduction followed very closely upon his abortive work on the G-Prologue. A like inference is there to be drawn from the inclusion of the Man of Law’s Tale, whose heroine is very much a soul-sister to those of the Legend. A closer look at the Man of Law’s reference to the contents of the Seintes Legende of Cupide reveals the extent to which matters are turned upside down. Nineteen ladies are announced in the Legend’s Prologue, F as well as G,58 and this is also the number that we find in the so-called Balade, known as Hyd, Absalon (or Absolon), that is sung there. The Man of Law’s list gamely comes up with the same number. However, one of the ladies does not belong there: this is Alcyone, who figures in Chaucer’s earlier Book of the Duchess). Another two, Cleopatra and Philomela, are left out and for the final two tales, Canacee and Apollonius of Tyre, he claims that Chaucer never stooped to anything so objectionable. Instead of letting ourselves be drawn into the Man of Law’s web of words, where lies confusion, let us try some graphic sense. The graph below shows Hyd, Absalon, the Legend itself, the Man of Law’s list, the corresponding tales in the Confessio, and Ovid’s Heroides side by side. Roman type indicates heroines mentioned, bold face represents tales actually written. Alcyone is excluded, since she is so clearly referred to as an early work not really belonging here.

58

F-Prologue line 283, G-Prologue line 186.

Towards Composing a Testament of Love | 75 Hyd, Absalon Ester

Legend

Penelope

Man of Law

Gower

Heroides

Penelopee

Penelopee

Penelope

Marcia Catoun Ysoude

Yseult

Eleyne

Eleyne

Eleine

Alceste

Alceste

Alceste

Lucresse

Lucresse

Tesbee

Tesbee

Helen

Laveyne Lucresse

Lucrece

Polixene Cleopatre

Cleopatra

Tysbe

Thisbe

Herro Dido

Erro Dido

Laodomya Phillis

Dido

Dido

Ladomya Phyllis

Canace

Thisbe Hero Dido Laodomya

Phillis

Phillis

Phyllis

[Canacee]

Canacee

Canace

Isiphilee

Isiphilee

Hypsipyle

Ysiphile

Hypsipyle

Ypermystre

Hypermnestra Ypermystra

Adriane

Ariadne

Adriane

Adriane

Hypermne stra Ariadne

Medea

Medea

Medea

Medea

Philomela

Philomela Dianyre

Dianyre

Dianyre

Brixseyde

Brixseyde

Brixseyde

Apollonius of Tyre

Apollonius of Tyre

Hermyon

Hermyon

One good diagram is worth a thousand words. The Man of Law’s list, which claims to sum up actual writings with the exception of Canacee and Apollonius of Tyre, badly corresponds with the left side, whereas it tallies remarkably well with the right. Plainly, this is not a somewhat disjointed reference to the Legend of Good Women or a prospectus of tales to expect for it, which, anyway, ought to reside under the balade and not be presented in this Prologue. As an account

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of Chaucer’s productivity the list is a somewhat bogus one. What we have here is a demonstration that it is basically a selection from the Confessio or, better yet, a selection of Heroides-based tales found in it. The correspondences with Gower and Ovid are unmistakable. Fourteen tales that he mentions figure in the Confessio Amantis and another two ladies are alluded to, while a mere eight have a Chaucerian counterpart in the Legend of Good Women.59 If the Balade scores slightly better, this is for the simple reason that it mentions (which is all) six more heroines that figure in the Man of Law’s list and in the actual tales that are found in Gower. The fact that Ovid is explicitly referred to twice by the Man of Law suggests that we may read this as an intentional pointer on how to interpret the list. All of this links up with another consideration, which is that this list must have come close upon Chaucer’s most recent work on the Legend. Yet the G-Prologue exhibits not the slightest indication as to any major new directions for the various tales. Hyd, Absalon announces Alceste’s coming instead of that of “my lady” (presumably Queen Anne, though this is contested) – a switch of heroine that is repeated by the Man of Law, thus confirming the close association of his list and the rewriting of the Legend’s prologue – but, barring some slight textual changes, this is all. The inference therefore is that it is improbable that the list should be any kind of projected itinerary for new work to be done on the Legend. Rather, what we have got here is a major clue, outlined carefully and at length for those among Chaucer’s audience who were/are a bit slow on the uptake and meant to make them to sit up and wonder who the Man of Law is really talking about, Chaucer or Gower. Though outwardly referring to the Legend up to the moment when the Man of Law bears down upon the two “wikked” tales, the list is plainly tailored to the Confessio. 59

This has also been pointed out by Elizabeth Scala, who notes that the Confessio contains, “directly or by allusion”, all the stories referred to by the Man of Law. She attributes the coalescence of his list with the Confessio to the Man of Law’s misidentification of the Legend as being the Confessio, which seems to me a position well taken. ‘Canacee and the Chaucer Canon: Incest and Other Unnarratables’, ChauR 30 (1995): 15-39, at 18. All the same, I find no allusions to Hero, Laodomya, Hypermnestra or Hermione in either Gower’s tales or in the long list of love’s heroines included in Book VIII of the Confessio (lines 2500-2650). A further point to note is that most of these good ladies also figure in Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus, which is regarded as a possible source of the Legend’s Cleopatra and was certainly used for the portrait of Zenobia in the Monk’s Tale.

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Basically, this is Chaucer making off with Gower’s laurels in a rather sly fashion. What he says here – as we have noted – that, well before Gower came up with his Confessio Amantis, he had already fulfilled the terms of the challenge, give or take a tale and anticipation rather than imitation being the name of the game here. But there is an attendant irony to these lines, what with his own praise being sung by the Man of Law in a passage that is effectively a literary review of Gower’s latest work. Once again, this is a neat reversal of what Gower does with respect to Chaucer. Somewhat maliciously, in the light of his spurious claim for the Legend of Good Women, Chaucer drives home his last shaft when he levels his criticism at the immorality of tales in the Confessio Amantis like those of Canacee or Apollonius of Tyre. He, on the other hand, “no word ne writeth […]/Of thilke wikke ensample of Canacee” nor “nolde nevere write in none of his sermons/Of swiche unkynde abhomynacions”. As the incest matter is solely a side-issue in Gower, this is much out of proportion and therefore, with its inflation and deflation, well-suited to the notion of a court game.60 In fact, Chaucer himself is not at all averse to such sensationalism. There is attempted rape in the Man of Law’s Tale, murder in the Prioress’s Tale, rape in the Wife of Bath’s Tale – to mention a random few – while Gower is the one to deal with such subject matter in a very down-toned fashion. All the same, it is true that Gower, drawing on the implications of Genesis, takes incest to be a natural thing and introduces an incestuous frisson, though happily resolved, in Apollonius’ reunion with his lost daughter Thaise. The Man of Law’s choice of word – unkynde [unnatural] – looks therefore as if it was inserted with special reference to Gower. The assertion is slightly mendacious also, as Chaucer does mention Canacee in his Balade but lets the Man of Law safeguard him here in an appropriately legalistic fashion by qualifying his “no word” to refer to the “unkynde abhomynacions” rather than Canacee herself. Surely, too, there is a mean bit of irony involved here when with a pious air he goes so far as to include in his sketch of Antiochus’ rape of his daughter the very sort of salacious detail that is absent in Gower. The same note of ironical dissembling may be drawn from a comparison with the Legend’s tale of Philomela, just such an incest victim on whose fate he spends a good deal of words. Note, by 60

Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), pp 93-101.

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the way, his use of “sermons” in line 87, which rather stretches its meaning when applied to the Legend but is quite appropriate to the tales of the Confessio.61 It is these final two, coming directly upon the Man of Law’s extensive listing of heroines drawn straight from the Confessio, that affirm that the barbs which Chaucer transmits via the Man of Law are truly directed at Gower. Even though he misrepresents the latter’s account of Apollonius with a faulty reference to its Latin original, it is clear that his remark is a pointed one, singling out the way in which Gower dealt with the theme of incest as something unsuited to the Confessio “as a genuinely penitential work”.62 This applies especially to Canacee’s love for her brother, which is is all about true love and fails to come down against incest, the moral of the story being directed at the cruel father who demands her death. Reference to Book VIII of the Confessio would have provided similar fuel, Gower’s position on incest being that it is not so much unnatural as proscribed by ecclesiastical authority.63 Worth noting here is that Chaucer’s remarks seem to indicate that his differences with Gower are thus primarily a matter of morality. What remains to be looked into is the Man of Law’s confusion of Chaucer and Gower, of the Legend and the Confessio Amantis. The mix-up appears to serve a double purpose. On the one hand, it is an effective device enabling Chaucer to claim that his youthful “lyrics” were more numerous and in better taste than what the Confessio Amantis comes up with, for all Gower’s efforts to plagiarize Ovid’s entire oeuvre. On the other, it is generally realized that the Man of Law is sketched as a pretentious man, laying claim to a wide erudition without really knowing too well what he is talking about. In this role, his intimacy with recent literature is shown up as shallow, at best. He has evidently heard of Chaucer and Gower and their writings, but while he seems to be rather familiar with the contents of the Confessio he apparently thinks that they belong to the Legend of Good Women. Of course, we are aware that there is some common meeting ground 61

The “sermon” suggestion is from Fisher (p 289), who points out the word. Benson, p 856 note 77-89; Fisher, p 289. Larry D. Benson, ‘Incest and Moral Poetry in Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, ChauR 19 (1984): 100-09. But, then, there is every reason to distrust the Confessio as genuinely penitential. 63 Benson, p 856; Russell A. Peck ed. John Gower: Confessio Amantis, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), pp xxiii-xxiv. 62

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between these works, just as there is between their authors. Yet to mix them up in the Man of Law’s fashion is rather too much. The man is a bit of a poseur whose literary knowledge is somewhat confused and it is clear that much would be explained if there were some contemporary joke involved here, which, in the light of its context, is played on Gower – a matter that is discussed in the next chapter. Battle is Joined Earlier we concluded that the Legend of Good Women was the obvious target of Gower’s barbs but that, after briefly considering a reply from this direction, Chaucer opted in favour of the Canterbury Tales. We have found good confirmation of these considerations and conclusions, as it is plain that Chaucer recognized the direction of Gower’s remarks. Hence his counterclaim that his Legend has long outdone geriatric Gower in terms of good ladies without lapsing into the abominably bad taste of some of the latter’s tales. The attendant inflation of the Legend is in full accord with the huffing and puffing that goes with any good duel and provides an excellent counterpoint to Gower’s definition of Chaucer as an immature poet of predominantly light verse. Implicitly, what he is saying is that, having improved on Gower well beforehand, any Testament of Love in the shape of the Legend is out of the question and that, as signalled by the inclusion of his acknowledgment of the challenge here, it is the Canterbury Tales that one should look to for his answer. In terms of dating, this implies that the Man of Law’s Introduction must be later than the G-Prologue, though, as indicated by its echoes from the Balade, probably only marginally so. We find much the same reading of the evidence in Fisher, who be lieves that it was Chaucer’s growing dissatisfaction with the Legend that made him turn elsewhere and try his hand at something new in the Canterbury Tales.64 For this he turned to the tale of Custance. One of the obvious reasons why this tale should have been selected is that its heroine is one of the good women that Chaucer had not yet dealt with so far. It is full of the “moralitee” that he claims to be so sadly lacking in Gower’s Canacee and Apollonius of Tyre.65 Also, Chaucer’s choice of tale confirms that he had not yet moved 64 65

Fisher, p 287. To my best knowledge I am quoting someone here, but cannot trace my source.

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significantly away from the Legend as the sort of answer required by the challenge, for he was evidently still thinking in terms of Ovidian heroines. It is, at any rate, a reaction which is entirely in line with Gower’s implicit call for something Legend-like. In fact, one is tempted to consider whether Custance was not, if only briefly, intended for the Legend as part of his answer there to the challenge but was shifted to the Canterbury Tales when he saw how much better she could be applied in a Testament of Love. She is very much like the Legend heroines, ladies typified by Helen Cooper as “noted more for being deserted than for being good”, though Custance qualifies on both counts.66 What argues against this, but need not weigh heavily, is that neither the Man of Law’s Tale nor Gower’s version is in any way indebted, as are most of the Legend’s stories and so many of those in the Confessio, to Ovid’s Heroides nor does she, as a Christian heroine, belong to his more distant and mythological past. Chaucer’s use of the story of Custance also confirms the virtuevice direction that ought to be the evident characteristic of a tale intended for his Testament. In fact, his heroine is so virtuous that she incorporates not just constancy but all the other virtues, so that it is a tempting thought that her tale may have been meant to complement a tale of all-encompassing vice and that these two, together with the Parson’s Tale and the Retraction were somehow to be a miniature yet superior Testament of Love. A crucial point is the matter of sources. The Man of Law’s Tale is a story that we also find in Gower. While both versions are based upon the Anglo-Norman Chronicle by the Dominican Friar Nicholas Trevet (or Trivet), one’s natural expectation is that, in so obvious a Gowerian context as provided by the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale and given Chaucer’s presumable liking for a bit of literary retaliation, this should be a demonstration how as a writer of “minor verse” he could effortlessly outdo Gower at his own game by using one of his own tales. So it is, but recognition of this has been forthcoming only reluctantly. The reason for this is an essay by Edward Block in 1953, which concluded that there were “some nine passages, totalling some forty words, in which the close verbal resemblance made Chaucer’s borrowing from Gower unmistakable”. Though this shows that Chaucer wrote his own tale with a knowledge of Gower’s, 66

Cooper, Structure, p 3.

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the effect of Block’s study was to create “the impression that has remained the last word in most reader’s minds, that Gower’s influence on Chaucer, while demonstrable, was almost entirely negligible”.67 More recently, however, this matter has been re-addressed in an article by Peter Nicholson. While Trevet remains the basis for Chaucer’s tale, Nicholson shows through such characteristics as shared passages, shared additions and shared omissions of many kinds, and a shared basic plot that Gower’s version, rather than Trevet’s, was the major influence on the shaping of the Man of Law’s Tale.68 As he writes in another article written in the same year, a close look at what Chaucer borrowed reveals a number of passages in which he interwove details from his two sources, indicating that he was equally familiar with each and that he may well have had copies of both before him as he worked. And a more general comparison turns up some particularly significant similarities between Chaucer’s version and Gower’s.69

This is illuminating, for such a debt to Gower contributes a further and major point of compliance with the requirements of a Testament of Love. Whether the result is a real improvement on Gower is another matter. Most of us will probably agree that it is superior to Gower’s version, though one is inclined to heave a sigh upon finishing it and wish that here at least Chaucer had been a bit more like Gower 67

Peter Nicholson, ‘ The Man of Law’s Tale: What Chaucer Really Owed to Gower’, ChauR 26 (1991): 153-73. 68 Nicholson: 153-73 (for his conclusions: 171). At this point, it could well be asked if things are not the other way around. Is the assumption that Chaucer follows Gower correct and could not Gower have been the borrower here? The tale of Custance is presumably one of Chaucer’s early products, possibly stemming from the late ’eighties when Gower was still working on his first draft of the Confessio. I think it probable that the Man of Law’s Tale and its Prologue were integrally lifted from another Canterbury narrator when the demands of Gower’s challenge made this necessary, indicating that his tale was there all along. If Gower could be shown to have based his version on a pre-view reading of Chaucer’s, this would contribute a superior reason why it was precisely this tale that was picked to deal with Gower’s challenge. As it is, this fails to work. Chaucer’s version was touched up with details from Innocent III’s De miseria, which are wanting in Gower’s tale. As it is hardly credible that Gower should have consistently scrapped all of the contributions from Innocent, we deduce that his tale cannot have been a reduced version of Chaucer’s. 69 Peter Nicholson, ‘Chaucer Borrows From Gower: The Sources of the Man of Law’s Tale’, in Yeager: 85-99, at 85.

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in terms of coming to a conclusion. But then our literary judgement in his favour does not necessarily reflect fourteenth-century taste. The story has been turned into what may be termed a lay saint’s life, with some additional religious sentiment thrown in from Innocent III’s De miseria humane condicionis, especially on the subject of deadly sin.70 Furthermore, as Robert Enzer Lewis notes, Chaucer is more emphatic than his sources on the subject of good and evil. Custance, who is persistently likened to the Virgin, is inspired by God and Christ, the evil-doers by “Sathanas”.71 Why this should be so is difficult to understand, unless we take it to be related to the Testament of Love, with whose requirements it complies in an obvious fashion. In this connection, we may also note that the Man of Law’s Tale, like the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, stands out among the Tales for its extensive glossing. There is admittedly no sure way of deciding whether these are authorial or scribal, but if the former were to be the case, as proposed by several scholars,72 this would provide another link with the Confessio Amantis. There one finds a sizeable framework of glosses that were expressly inserted by its author, so that the signal presence of a similar apparatus in these tales by Chaucer would serve to underline their connection with Gower. Perhaps, the Tale is superior most of all because, as Chaucer has taken care to suggest in his Introduction, it is not disfigured by any lapses in moral good taste like some of Gower’s products. It has been pointed out that the tale as such closely skirts the incest issue which the Man of Law broaches in his Introduction but then so do Gower’s and Trevet’s versions. Fisher, who sees no challenge here,73 nevertheless recognizes its spirit of rivalry and sees it as an attempt on Chaucer’s part to outdo Gower in sanctimoniousness. If we allow that the Man of Law’s Tale corroborates the Goweroriented direction of Chaucer’s writing in this place, which is basically a matter of record, this also implies that it is used to score a point in a typically Chaucerian fashion, whereby Gower’s own tale is 70

Fisher, p 292; Benson, p 9. Robert Enzer Lewis, ‘Chaucer’s Artistic Use of Pope Innocent III’s De Miseria Humane Conditionis in the Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale’, PMLA 81 (1966): 485-92. 71 Lewis, pp 490-92. 72 Benson, p 857. 73 Fisher, p 292. Why Chaucer should have done so is a matter upon which Fisher is silent.

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brought to bear against him. I am talking here of his liking for literary tit-for-tat retribution. An indication of the direction in which we should perhaps look is the fact, noted before, that Gower’s version deals with the sin of Detraction as a variety of Envy. His tangential use of the tale stands corrected here by Chaucer, who uses it for its natural theme of Steadfastness or, as the heroine’s name indicates, Constancy. Could this perhaps be a comment on Gower’s leanings toward Henry? Alternatively, it may simply be that the Tale functions, among other things, to alert his public to the Gowerian nature of this tale and the one to follow, which, like John Fisher, I firmly believe to be the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. With this we come to the matter of the tale shifts involved here, which turn out to be a source of rare information. In the Man of Law’s case a full shifting of two or more tales was probably involved, while the links attest to several stages of development and consequently prove to be most interesting and informative. Worth noting, too, is that all of this fits very well into the notion of a new plan. A telling instance is provided by the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale. This is when in announcing his tale, the Man of Law promises to “speke in prose” and then, as Robinson expresses it, “proceeds to relate the story of Custance in seven-line stanzas! Doubtless when Chaucer wrote the headlink, he meant to assign a prose tale to the Man of Law”. This is evidently true, just as it is clear that, as Derek Brewer observes, “the whole Introduction cries aloud the lack of revision”.74 If Robinson awkwardly writes that Chaucer meant to include a prose tale, we must nevertheless suppose that he wishes to say that such a prose tale had been assigned to the Man of Law (or, rather, the Sergeant of the Law) at an earlier date, before he came up with the idea of switching to the tale of Custance, and that this was the one that he is referring to. There is some slight chance that, with Trevet’s history of Custance in mind, Chaucer intended to come up with a prose version of his own but had a subsequent change of heart. Less probable but still within the realm of reasonable conjecture is the notion that the mention of prose is an anticipatory remark, referring to an intented replacement of Custance by a tale in prose. Yet the likely view is that the Man of Law was originally assigned a prose tale, usually taken to 74

Robinson, p 6. Brewer, p 293.

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be the Melibee, which is a similarly sententious tale and in prose at that, and that this was later shifted (to himself, rather ironically, and implying that he was willing to admit to an ostensible self-picture that came close to this) in order to make room for the present tale. The remark about prose provides an interesting insight: But of my tale how shal I doon this day? Me were looth be likned, doutelees, To Muses that men clepe Pierides – Metamorphosios woot what I mene; But nathelees, I recche noght a bene Though I come after hym with hawebake, I speke in prose, and lat hym rhymes make. [IntroMLT, 90-96]

In referring back to the Man of Law’s lengthy list of Chaucer’s poetry the announcement of a tale in prose shows itself to be inseparable from the rest of the Introduction. From this we infer that at the time of its writing the Introduction was probably still followed by the Melibee. Only later – slightly later – did he think of replacing it with the tale of Custance, for reasons to be discussed below. When effectuating this, he neglected to adapt the reference to prose, which may have been carelessness but just as well a matter of intentionally delayed revision. Oversights such as this, if oversights they are, constitute a familiar aspect of some of the Canterbury Tales, just like the tale shifts which they sometimes involve. We have come across them before and shall do so again. Here the tale shift is particularly significant. It shows that a tale not associated with the Confessio Amantis yet well-suited to a Gowerian virtue-vice scheme was discarded in favour of one that was distinctly indebted to the Confessio. This gives us a markedly Gowerian tale as a follow-up of what can only be interpreted as a Gowerdirected passage. A rephrasing may be necessary here, as this is an important moment for the theory that is being outlined here. There is no discernible reason why the Melibee should have been shifted away from the Man of Law in terms of Gower’s challenge, as it is just as much about virtue as the tale of Custance and pompous enough to have been preserved in its original place. Nor is the Man of Law’s Tale particularly suited to its narrator’s profession, even if – much like the Melibee – its sententious tone is, as we shall discuss below. Then, the Melibee is clearly a Fürstenspiegel type of tale, a didactic and

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moralizing discourse on good and wise governance. Given Gower’s own treatment of the subject in Book VII of the Confessio and given the importance of the concept of maistrie here, Chaucer’s shifting of the Melibee becomes rather puzzling even, for there is ample material here to link it both to Gower and to the Wife of Bath, next in line in his response to the challenge. Thus, as the choice of Custance strongly implies, as do the Man of Law’s introductory words, that her tale was inserted at this point because Chaucer needed something that unmistakably referred to Gower, this can hardly have been because the Melibee did not fit the bill. The chief reason that I can think of is that Custance provides a better black-and-white alternative to the Wife of Bath and a shift of emphasis. The juxtapostion of the Melibee and the Wife’s Tale sets off Dame Prudence’s wisdom against the Wife’s foolish pursuits, whereas Custance turns this contrast into one virtue and vice, constancy and inconstancy. Also, the Melibee could have been seen as a mirror for Richard II and, at this time and place, Chaucer may not have felt it proper to associate it with Gower and assigned its telling to himself in his pilgrim persona. If this is the case, a possible reason for this could have been Gower’s self-distancing from Richard in the Latin address to Henry of Derby which he added to the Confessio at some moment between the middle of 1390 and 1391. In its turn, this may be further connected with the possibility that the Man of Law may have been interpreted by Chaucer’s public as being Gower in disguise. However correct the notion of a tale shift may be, this does not ease our problems with the Introduction. Is it the original preface to the Melibee or a later interpolation by Chaucer? The fact that it is in severe need of revision is not really helpful, since this is probably bound up with the replacement of the Melibee by the tale of Custance. As it is, there are indications that the Canterbury Tales had already progressed well beyond the Melibee at the time of Chaucer including his answer to Gower in the Introduction. This suggests that we are dealing with a remake of an earlier version. The opening lines and their astronomical information may have been present already but the rest, running from lines 33 to 93, is consistently Gower-directed.75 Its 75

Another possibility is that the entire opening running from lines 1 to 32, with its astronomical inconsistencies (see Benson, p 854), was taken from elsewhere and moved to its present place in order to set the Man of Law into motion. It has also been pointed out that it constitutes a fresh start, recalling the General Prologue with its

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ending effortlessly moves from the Pierides remark to the announcement of a tale in prose. The Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale One is tempted to think that the inconsistency of the Man of Law’s announcement of a tale in prose which turns out to be rhyme royal instead might also be attributable to his demonstrable gift for garbling things. This, however, proves to be untenable. There is no room for construing any mix-up of poetry and prose in these lines: But nathelees, I recche noght a bene Though I come after hym with hawebake [poor fare]. I speke in prose, and lat hym rymes make.” And with that word he, with a sobre cheere, Bigan his tale, as ye shal after heere. [IntroMLT, 94-98]

Instead, these lines strongly suggest that the first version of the Man of Law’s response must have been in the shape of the Introduction followed by the Melibee, whereby it is a reasonable assumption that the latter was the original tale assigned to the Sergeant, as a sop to Gower perhaps in the shape of something wise-sounding for what may have been a rather cutting piece of satire in the General Prologue, as we discussed in the previous chapter, and was temporarily left as it was, though awaiting something better suited to Chaucer’s duel with Gower. The Man of Law’s Tale is unusual in possessing not just one introductory link but two. The second, which we know as the the Man of Law’s Prologue, not to be confused with the Introduction, is a passage of uncertain status whose applicability has left generations of scholars guessing.76 It is in no manner adapted to the Man of Law and looks redundant. While this would lead us to assume that its verses were meant to be cancelled, this notion runs into the problem that it fails to explain why they were included in the first place, the more so as they have not the slightest bearing on the Melibee, which we as-

astronomical reference and restatement of the story-telling conditions (Fisher, p 286). This is not quite correct. There is just one condition that is rehearsed or rather redefined: the agreed-upon obligation of producing a tale (and not tales, we should note). 76 Benson, p 856.

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sume to have been the original and supplanted tale.77 The Prologue is a sardonic outburst, directed at the poor and at rich merchants alike, and therefore seems hardly relevant to either a lawyer or his tale, but neither does it fit any previous situation involving the Melibee. On the other hand, its persistent inclusion from very early collections onward suggests that it was, editorially at least, interpreted to be consonant with either the Man of Law’s portrait in the General Prologue and the Introduction or his Tale. Its chief link with the Tale lies in the presence of passages drawn from Innocent III’s De miseria humane condicionis78 but the thematic connection is thin and solely resides in the mercantile setting of the Tale’s first eight stanzas. The basic suggestion that we derive from this is that prior to their assignment to the Man of Law they were both already combined in a context somehow involving the subject of merchants. A good guess here is that the Prologue represents a retained introduction – one that belonged with the tale of Custance from the start and was, together with this, originally assigned to another pilgrim. Their mutual reference to Innocent III’s De miseria is a good indication that their writing is closely associated, though it also indicates that this was done only shortly before their shift to their present place. The mercantile setting of the opening stanzas of the Man of Law’s Tale further corroborates the association. Also, to judge by the somewhat theatrical manner of its telling, its narrator was a bit of a kindred spirit to the Man of Law, with a liking for bathos and not too firmly grounded in historical and biblical detail. A closer inspection tells us that the Prologue is greatly reminiscent of the Clerk’s Lenvoy de Chaucer and its thickly laid-on irony. Its five stanzas are decidedly similar in length and composition and, most notably, written in a very similar voice. Comparison with the Envoy strongly suggests that we have someone speaking for Chaucer here who is not the Man of Law. As the three final lines show, this is not Chaucer himself, but there is no mistaking the sardonic slant. If the Envoy urges women not to stint their efforts to turn the world upside down, so the present stanzas urge, with equally overt and unmistakable irony, the poor to stop whining and rich merchants to persist in their perennial quest for more – all this, of course, from the perspective of a sardonic outsider. 77 78

Benson, p 856. Benson, pp 856-57.

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The final stanza looks like a possible key to its preservation at the head of the Man of Law’s Tale. Its first four lines are perfectly applicable to lawyers as a class in search of wealth and profit, and so to John Gower himself, and nicely complements Tupper’s observation that lawyers as a class “were traditionally associated with grumbling against poverty”.79 Keeping Gower in mind as a clever land speculator and much given to discoursing broadly on the state of the country and the world beyond are not the next lines very apt? Ye seken lond and see for yowre wynnynges; As wise folk ye knowen al th’estaat Of regnes; ye been fadres of tidynges And tales, bothe of pees and of debaat. [IntroMLT, 127-30]

Yet the simplest explanation of the Prologue’s inclusion is probably that this is a simple matter of inertia. We are so conditioned to regard links as individual and occasionally roving parts that we tend to overlook the fact that some of them are codicologically inseparable from their tales. Unlike the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, which is plainly a link apart, the primal Prologue and the tale of Custance may well have constituted a single booklet or fascicle. They are, after all, in the same voice, richly larded with apostrophe and high-flown sentiment, and in the same rime royal throughout, unlike either the Introduction or the Epilogue. It is not difficult to see that if the Prologue was followed by the Tale on the same leaf, this would have made it difficult for Chaucer to detach it without having the quire’s first and last leaves copied out anew. As, however, there was to be a final revision of the entire quire and indeed many of the other quires still to come – something that is strongly suggested by the actual state of the Canterbury Tales – the natural thing would have been to let the matter rest. Later, without sufficient indication in his Nachlass as to its desired removal, editors would have chosen to sail with the wind and leave matters as they found them. Conversely, the unrevised state of the Prologue strongly suggests that the Tale, too, must have been reassigned to the Man of Law without any notable revision. Of course, Chaucer could have inserted directions here and there as to changes that he wished to be effected in the manuscript, but if so why was no such effort expended on the Prologue? 79

Benson, p 856.

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In point of fact, the Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale are found in the early manuscripts (Hengwrt, Corpus, Harley 7334, Lansdowne, Dd 4.24 and Gg 4.27) as a single document and it is only in Ellesmere that the two are separated.80 From this we may deduce that there was probably nothing in their copytext to suggest any differentiation between the two, so that it must have been Ellesmere’s clever arranger Adam who first came up with the notion of splitting off the first five stanzas as a separate Prologue, perhaps as lines that he had serious doubts about but dared not simply throw out. This makes them an editorial construct. While this confirms our basic stance, it is also a reason to tread warily on how we deal with the Man of Law’s Tale. If the evidence suggests that, together with the Prologue, it was transferred bodily from its original narrator to the Man of Law without any attention to revision, which is markedly true of the Prologue and the beginning of the Tale, any narrative peculiarities in the latter that we come across ought to belong to its previous situation. It would be most unlikely for Chaucer to have inserted detailed jabs at the Man of Law in various places without at all addressing such major inconsistencies as the Prologue or the Tale’s opening stanzas. What necessitates this caution is Rodney Delasanta’s article “Of Great Reverence” on the Man of Law’s slip-ups. It is easy enough to agree with him that a passage like the Introduction is an attempt to show up the Man of Law as a bit of a fool. We shall be doing quite a bit in the same vein in the next chapter. However, it is a very different matter when Delasanta argues that at various points in the Tale, too, malapropisms (excusez l’anachronisme) were inserted in order to show up the Man of Law as a “not-quite scholar”, because “it is inconceivable that [in view of Chaucer’s evident dislike] he would have allowed the Man of Law to shine in a story chosen for him without the attendant Chaucerian undercuttings”.81 Much as I would like to agree, as his argument is well in line with mine, there was probably no revision with respect to the Man of Law within the confines of his Tale. 80

Blake, p 144. It seems to me that Chaucer’s “oversight” of the reference to a tale in prose in the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale could also have been related to the manuscript situation. If the Introduction was written on a loose leaf or had to be detached from the quire for the Melibee and added to the Man of Law’s quire at a later date, this could explain why it was overlooked, particularly if the text should have briefly continued on the reverse side. 81 Delasanta, ‘Great Reverence’: 290.

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Delasanta comes up with half a dozen instances where biblical and historical accuracy is violated. None of these are found in Trevet or Gower. He takes this to mean that the Tale serves as a continued demonstration of the Man of Law’s pretentiousness and defective learning. It is true that the pompous voice and the pious sentiment – the presumable reasons why the Tale was seen as suitable for a reassignation to the Man of Law – suggest an undercurrent of irony. Yet it is improbable, on the one hand for Chaucer to have upgraded the tale with material from De miseria82 and, on the other, deliberately inserted biblical errors. One of the problems, Delasanta’s as well as mine, is that it is next to impossible to say with any certainty that lines found in the Man of Law’s Tale do not occur in Trevet. Chaucer studies are still awaiting a definitive study and text for the Trevet manuscript that Chaucer used. As Benson reports, “Robert M. Correale is preparing an edition of a text of Trevet for the Chaucer Library that is closer to Chaucer’s version at many points than any previous edition” [italics mine].83 In other words, there is a chance that Delasanta’s instances do come from Trevet after all. This is underscored by the error that Benson notes concerning Lucan boasting about “the triumphe of Julius” [MLT, 401], when Caesar never held any triumph. While no such statement is present in the Trevet versions in Originals and Analogues or Sources and Analogues, it appears that Correale has come up with a Trevet manuscript “which says that after Caesar conquered Pompey [sic], he ‘held a triumph for three years’.”84 Delasanta also objects to the Man of Law having Jonah spouted up at Nineveh [MLT, 484-87], which is “a city of three days journey inland” from the Tigris and thus far away from normal whale routes. This, he feels, clashes with the biblical account:85 82

To be quite clear on this, I should like to point out that I think that Chaucer’s borrowing from Innocent happened prior to his reassignation of the present Prologue and Tale to the Man of Law, even though I do feel that this cannot have been much earlier: a matter of weeks or months rather than years. 83 Benson, p 857. Such an edition would be most welcome, particularly if it were also to tell us how popular Trevet was in Chaucer’s day and to what extent his Custance and other writings were circulating. 84 Benson, p 860 note 400-401. There is a mix-up here of the town of Pompeii and Caesar’s one-time confederate Pompey. The former was never conquered, the latter was defeated. 85 Delasanta, ‘Great Reverence’: 295.

Towards Composing a Testament of Love | 91 And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying. Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. [Jonah, 2:10 – 3:4]

But the inconsistency which Delasanta notes resides in the Bible itself. When, after three days and three nights, the whale regurgitates a penitent Jonah, there is nothing in the Bible text to imply that this was anywhere between Joppa and Tarshish or that the author of the text was unsure of Nineveh’s location. Instead, the story indicates that this marvellous creature, as a sort of watery jinnee, had covered a huge distance and did indeed disgorge him at Nineveh, in order to make Jonah comply with God’s command. It is a great miracle, foreshadowing the equally great miracle of the city’s populace repenting and, exegetically, a prefiguration of Christ’s death and resurrection as well as the conversion of mankind. The Bible is not concerned with geographic consistency here, but with the wondrous ways of God. Strictly speaking, Delasanta is also mistaken on the location of Nineveh. It is not “a city of three days journey inland”, which contradicts his own statement that it lies on the Tigris, but a place so large that it takes three days to traverse and Jonah does not feel com-pelled to preach his message until he is half a day’s distance from its centre. This is also what we find upon the basis of modern bible studies: the distance refers to Nineveh’s diameter, which is similarly the basic reading that is given by the Vulgate, Chaucer’s likeliest source.86 To give Delasanta his due, medieval ecclesiastical authority is none too sure on this point. St Eusebius Hieronymus, for instance, reads the text, which is “et Ninive erat civitas magna Dei, itinere trium dierum”, to refer to its circumference and, rather inconsistently, also to mean that it took three days to reach.87 86

Erik Eynikel, E. Noort, T. Baarda, A. Denaux eds, Internationaal Commentaar op de Bijbel (Kok/Averbode, Kampen 2001), Band 2, p 1326. 87 J.-P. Migne ed., Patrologiae Latinae, Tomus XXV [Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis Presbyteri Opera Omnia, Tomus V, Saeculum V, Annus 420] (Paris: Bibliothecae Cleri Universae 1865), p 1193. The Vulgate omits the word Dei in the text just cited. Magna Dei here means “great, [even] to God”.

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Delasanta further feels that, on account of his extensive travelling and therefore presumably deep interest in matters of geography, Chaucer must have been aware of Nineveh’s place on the map.88 This is not very likely, to be mild. We have little idea what Chaucer’s geographical knowledge of the ancient world was like. At times when it crops up he shows himself to be quite unsure of its topography, as we can see in his introduction of the story of Zenobia in the Monk’s Tale [2247-51] which associates the city of Palmyra with Persia instead of Syria. To be uncertain on the whereabouts of Nineveh seems to me no great fault on anybody’s part, schooled or otherwise, then or now. Lacking our archeological knowledge, which was only acquired in the past century, Chaucer would have had just the roughest idea of Nineveh’s location. Even a minute perusal of the Bible or, alternatively, something like the Mappa Mundi would have left him almost clueless. Chaucer’s words on Goliath – another perceived error – do not properly constitute a misrepresentation: they simply replace Goliath’s “six cubits and one span” by the hyperbolical “unmesurable of lengthe” [MLT, 934]. A genuine misrepresentation is found in the story of Daniel in the lion’s den [MLT, 473-76]: the narrator populates it with men who get devoured by the lions with the sole exception of Daniel. Yet the mistake is not greatly removed from the actual account: after his deliverance Daniel’s enemies do get thrown to the lions and eaten. And then there is the Hannibal matter. While the Man of Law refers to him as having defeated the Romans “tymes thre” [MLT, 291], Delasanta points out that in actual historical fact he inflicted many more defeats upon them.89 Yet here, too, the Man of Law cannot really be said to be dismally wrong. Hannibal’s campaign resulted in three major defeats upon the Romans: his double victory over the consuls Scipio and Longus at the rivers Ticinus and Trebia (218 BC), his victory at Lake Trasimene in 217 and the overwhelming one at Cannae in 216. These are the ones that really count. In addition, three being not only a familiar biblical number to suggest completion but very well-liked in this sense in all sort of religious context, it could further be that “tymes thre” is simply used here in a general sense and should be read to mean “thoroughly”. Obviously, the inconsistencies that Delasanta discerns are less serious and unambiguous than he feels. Nor do they contribute any88 89

Delasanta, ‘Great Reverence’: 294. Delasanta, ‘Great Reverence’: 295-96.

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thing special with respect to Gower or his version of the Custance saga. This implies that, insofar as they are truly wrong, we are simply dealing with natural slips attributable to Chaucer or his sources. Matters might be different if Chaucer and Trevet’s citation from the Bible and other sources could be shown to be immaculate, but this is not so. Some of the other borrowings from Trevet that we come across elsewhere in the Canterbury Tales also exhibit errors, which are impossible to attribute to any tendency by the Man of Law to mix up his sources and reside with Trevet himself. Instances of this are the confusion of Jabel and Lamech as the inventor of tents (Anelida and Arcite, 150-54) and the Pardoner’s account of John the Baptist’s death (PardT, 488-91), both of which deviate from the biblical account.90 The Monk’s Tale, to mention another instance, places Daniel in the fiery furnace. Even the Parson’s Tale, not notably indebted to Trevet, reveals such slips, like the Parson’s claim that Mary Magdalene anointed Christ’s head when this should be his feet.91 A matter that remains for us to pay some attention to is to whose retained introduction the Man of Law’s Prologue must be supposed to point. Our first thought is of course the Merchant and his portrait in the General Prologue, especially the poverty matter in line 280 (“Ther wiste no wight that he was in dette”) and the suggestive clustering of textual echoes which the passage quoted five pages ago shares with these lines: His resons he spak ful solempnely, Sownynge alwey the’encrees of his wynnyng. He wolde the see were kept for any thyng Bitwixe Middelburgh and Orewelle. [GenProl 274-77]

The mercantile slant of the final two stanzas of the Prologue and the first eight stanzas of the Man of Law’s Tale are a running argument in favour of reading the Merchant here. But we run into a problem when we consider that every word of his Prologue reflects back upon himself, since his own indigence and his merchant status are major aspects of his portrait in the General Prologue. In debt himself, why should he inveigh against his fellow-victims or as a mer90 Robert M. Correale, ‘Chaucer’s Manuscript of Nicholas Trevet’s Les Chronicles’, ChauR 25 (1991): 238-65, at 254-56. 91 For the Monk see Benson, p 244 ll. 2165-66 and note (p 932); ParsT, 502.

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chant himself level his irony at his fellow-merchants? Disgust at his own state and envy of his wealthy fellows? Unless one is prepared to overlook the sardonic voice of these final stanzas, like Benson for instance, who appears to read them to be in “praise of wealth”,92 there is a suggestion here that the Merchant is not the original narrator. This could also be inferred from its final two lines: “…a marchant, goon is many a yeere,/Me taughte a tale, which that ye shal heere”. It is the speaker’s use of “a marchant” that seems to imply that he himself cannot be a merchant, as this is not how we expect people to speak of someone belonging to their own station in life. Yet there is a good counter-argument to deal with all this. The textual correspondences are strong. In Chaucer, this almost invariably seems to mean a close compositional relation. It further implies that the failure of the speaker of the Prologue to identify with the merchant from whom he had the tale may simply be a matter of insufficient authorial immersion in his character. To this it may be added that it is perfectly possible to speak of an old colleague in terms of an old hand at the same trade in the way that the Prologue does. “This is a tale told to me by an old merchant – in fact, the man who many years ago taught me the tricks of the trade…” and such ways of framing things make perfect sense, without being inconsistent. What may help to resolve some of the Prologue’s puzzling aspects is by reading it not so much as an introductory passage but as basically an epilogue, even though we find it to be part and parcel of the tale to follow. There is no fundamental objection to doing so. The terms introduction, prologue and epilogue are actually quite arbitrary and fundamentally a scribal/editorial invention. Many links are simply inter-tale links that serve both to round off the preceding narration and introduce the next, and their present status as prologues and epilogues simply a matter of editorial intervention. Here we may also note that the Man of Law’s Prologue adds nothing to the theme of his Tale, and only the final three lines of its last stanza serve as an introduction, so that it becomes a likely supposition that its general contents do not so much point forward as refer backward instead. Upon consideration, this “prologue” is one that has a distinctly ecclesiastical ring. One long apostrophe, its repeated O’s, lofty tone, exaggeration, citation from every-day life, folk wisdom and reference 92

Benson, p 856.

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to the Bible (which are also elements typical of the Tale) all point in a homiletic direction, reminiscent of such consummate performers as the Pardoner but this time, vide the tale that follows, pronounced by a good cleric but one, to judge by the evidence, who does not seem to be present among the Canterbury pilgrims. Now this just a suggestion, but what if the Man of Law’s Tale were originally written for a different occasion, a religious one, like some of the other Canterbury tales such as the Second Nun’s? This would account for the ecclesiastical voice. Subsequent steps would have been its incorporation into the Canterbury effort, under the Merchant’s aegis and with some cursory attention to his trade in the introductory stanzas. Such a situation also goes a long way to account for the inconsistencies in the mercantile voice. Such inattention to detail and to detailed revision is a familiar aspect of the Canterbury Tales, attributable – one would think – to an organizational set-up whereby, on the whole, only the most urgent alterations were effected and all other rewriting postponed until the time had come for a final, in toto revision of the entire work. Then, with the coming of the Testament of Love, it was reassigned to the Man of Law. The idea of such a shifting sequence may look somewhat forced but similar instances actually crop up elsewhere in the Canterbury Tales. Also, beyond the introductory stanzas the Merchant may not seem to be particularly suited to the tale that follows but then this is something that can justifiably be said with respect to his present tale and several of the other tales as well. As for the tale that the Prologue refers back to, leaving aside the possibility of a tale not yet acquired or incorporated by Chaucer, there is only one tale that arguably fits the specifications, even if we have to stretch our definition of poverty in order to make it fit. This is the tale of the Merchant of St Denis, which we know as the Shipman’s Tale but was originally assigned to the Wife of Bath. Its nameless heroine is married to a rich merchant but has managed to run up a steep debt without her husband knowing. She owes a hundred franks, which is pretty much: something like a quarter of what we shall find Gower to have paid for the entire estate of Aldington Septvauns when we discuss this in the next chapter. She is prepared to prostitute herself in order to get out of her predicament. This is the poverty matter: she has not got a penny, and there is an element of spiritual poverty involved as well. No wonder that the prologist should be scathing on the subject: such poverty is worthy of contempt only. The husband has

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no eyes for her needs (she has “to lite and he hath al”), for he is a merchant all bent upon making a good profit along typically mercantile lines and travels all over the country and beyond in his pursuit of gain. He ultimately gets repaid by his wife in the form of “taillynge”, a pun on the repayment of her debt in the shape of sexual intercourse. The use of words like “chevyssaunce” associates his transactions with disreputable practices such as usury, making clear that this merchant is as reprehensible as his counterpart in the General Prologue.93 Needless to say, this provides a prime context for a tale by a Merchant to have come in and, at that, with a tale perfectly suited to gainsay the import of the Wife of Bath’s old tale. Assuming that this is a correct reading of the evidence, the implications are worth noting. The tale shift for the Man of Law indicates that, at some time after the writing of the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, the original Melibee was shifted to Chaucer the pilgrim and replaced by the tale of Custance. This tale turns out to have involved another reshuffling, as it was already included in the first place, probably as a somewhat puffed-up cleric’s tale. What is more, the various shifts go to show that Chaucer at this time had progressed well beyond Fragment I (A), since at any rate Fragments II (B1) and VII (B2 ) are involved here. This situation shows several further things. First, it goes together well with both Brock and Nicholson, the former finding that one-third of the Tale is based closely upon Trevet and the latter that it follows Gower’s lines of composition. In fact, as Correale indicates, Chaucer’s actual close debt to Trevet may be no more than 20 per cent or about 200 lines. Secondly, it is unmistakable that Chaucer was willing to go to great lengths and even turn his writings upside down in order to keep Gower installed as his target. Thirdly, the presumable fact that he picked this tale from among his own tales is an indication that he either had or desired no direct access to the Confessio Amantis at the time of his reponse. In the fourth place, if the Confessio was unavailable, this may imply that his relation with Gower was at a low ebb but could also be explained by supposing that Chaucer heard the book or parts of it recited only. As Joyce Coleman notes, “Gower seems to share with Chaucer the basic sense that writers transmit their rewritten sources to the ears of their audience [as] part of an ongoing 93

Nancy M. Reale, ‘A Marchant Was There With a Forked Berd’, in: Lambdin & Lambdin: 93-107, at 97.

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reality”.94 But if the indications are that, besides readers, the Confessio had its own audience, why should we not include Chaucer? One final aspect of the Prologue is that its Poverty Stanzas, perhaps unintentionally, also seem to suggest a link with the poverty argument of the Wife of Bath’s Loathly Lady. Her words are easily read as a correction of Gower’s stance on this subject (see Chapter Four), though they have no appreciable bearing on the Prologue. Could it be that Chaucer’s original ideas dwelt on a debate on riches vs poverty in marriage rather than maistrie vs gentilesse, that this was a factor contributing to his selection of the prologue and tale of Custance for the Man of Law and that this led to his inclusion of the Loathly Lady’s speech? What is attractive about interpreting matters in this light is that they fit the rest of the argument so well. With the Man of Law turned into a bit of a sententious fellow who may well be a caricature of Gower himself as we shall examine in the next chapter, the voice that is absent, except by implication, is Chaucer’s own. It is this lacuna that the present interpretation of the Prologue fills to a reasonably satisfactory degree, for it gives us the potential outline of a more outspoken authorial statement to complement the Man of Law’s outGowering of Gower,95 even if it forces us to assume that some extensive revision was still to come, As a final remark on the present subject, let me say that it is a mistake to assume, as Fisher appears to do, that the Man of Law’s Introduction is simply the place that Chaucer happened to working on when he was confronted with Gower’s challenge. While this is an attractive notion in the light of his presumed tendency for on-the-spot recording of new directions, it is contradicted by the evidence. We deduce from his work on the Legend that the challenge must have reached him earlier than this. We have seen that his later rearrangement for the Man of Law involved a reshuffling of tales already included and evidently belonging to (what we now define as) later Groups. Besides, I shall propose later that, in all likelihood, Chaucer was coterminously engaged upon writing as many as three (now unfinished) tales at more or less the same time when he broke up work 94

Coleman, p 187. A good alternative is that the entire situation reflects a stage of (incomplete) revision coming after a successful presentation of the Testament of Love and that the downtoning of Gower’s part is the outcome of Chaucer’s efforts to reintegrate the tales and links involved into the Canterbury Tales. See my Conclusion.

95

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on the old plan. He had therefore progressed considerably beyond the original Sergeant of the Law and his return to this place must consequently be regarded as an important piece of evidence. We shall come back to this subject at the end of Chapter Four. The Epilogue to the Man of Law’s Tale Before we take our leave of the Man of Law, we should stop and pause at the Epilogue to his tale. This link as such is prime Chaucer and it is obvious that at one time it served to round off the Sergeant of the Law’s Tale and introduce the next.96 A better way of referring to it ought to be the Sergeant of the Law’s Epilogue. It is also evidently a piece of writing of uncertain status, either cancelled or meant to be thoroughly overhauled, so modern editors point out.97 It is accepted in many manuscripts as a useful link, because it is plainly associated with (the Introduction to) the preceding tale and seems to have been regarded as easily adaptable. This has made it quite popular among the editors/scribes. At a guess, the Epilogue was put aside by Chaucer when he changed his mind on the three pilgrims involved and the tales that they told, but retrieved from his literary estate by some editor in need of a useful link. In those manuscripts where it is found, which excludes both Hengwrt and Ellesmere, it is inseparable from the Man of Law’s Tale. It is almost always used to introduce the Squire’s Tale,98 which it does not in any sense fit. Its connection with the Man of Law is based on the words thrifty tale, which echo line 46 of the Introduction, and phislyas [presumably meaning files], “termes queinte of lawe” and the associated remark about “Latyn” [1189-90]. There is some reluctance among scholars to accept these references as indicative of the Man of Law, even if this is what they manifestly are within the terms of the Canterbury Tales as we know them. Instead, it is pointed out by Benson that the “references to philosophy, legal terminology, and Latin are more descriptive of Melibee than the tale of Constance”.99 96

Manly-Rickert, vol I, p 38. Of course, the reverse could also be argued, claiming that this is a late link, intended to ease the passage from the Man of Law to the Wife of Bath (which is how Fisher applies it) but somehow never included. What argues against this is the Parson’s role, which badly agrees with his knitting-up function. 97 Benson, p 862. 98 Benson, pp 862-63, 1126. 99 Benson, p 863 note 1188-90.

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This is a bit of a puzzle. True, the Man of Law’s Tale is not a lawyer’s tale. It is a tale told by a lawyer but clearly not written with the legal profession in mind. A much more obvious point of reference is the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, which in a very similar way applies a variety of legal terms. Yet Benson is right to a degree. What we have here is a markedly unrevised endlink, which, with revision a long way off, deals with the three narrators who were originally involved: the Sergeant of the Law for the Melibee,100 the Parson as the unwelcome interrupter and the Wife of Bath for the tale of the Merchant of St Denis, now the Shipman’s Tale. This makes it more than likely that the legal terms refer to what the Sergeant, as the Man of Law’s predecessor, may originally have said in introducing the Melibee. All the same, it remains difficult to see what other than wishful thinking impels Benson to ascribe them to the Melibee itself. While its Job-like theme emphatically involves such concepts as justice and injustice, it deals with them in terms that are a far cry from the legalistic world of either the Sergeant or the Man of Law. It is certainly not a typical tale for lawyers. There can be little doubt that the link was originally meant to introduce a woman narrator and a married one at that. As such she must have been the Wife of Bath. All the other women in the pilgrimage are nuns. Admittedly, Chaucer may have had another married lady among his original cast of pilgrims and thrown her out, but this would have been a most unlikely action for an author whom we take to have been seeking to flesh out the number of participants rather than otherwise. The place of the narrator’s name appears in line 1179. Though the scribes almost invariably insert the Squire here, who certainly does not fill the part, the owner of the “joly body” encountered here is clearly the same lady who originally told the Shipman’s Tale, where the phrase crops up again in line 423.101 On the face of it, then, the Epilogue was written to link the Sergeant’s Tale to the Wife of Bath but uncoupled from her when Chaucer decided to fit her out with a new tale and assign her old one to the Shipman. The reasons that may have caused this uncoupling are discussed below. It is, anyway, easy to see that the final 13 lines of the 100

In all instances referring to the Melibee as the original tale as told by the Man of Law, I have stuck to an original Sergeant of the Law as a narrator distinct from the former. 101 Benson, p 862; Manly/Rickert, vol ii, pp 188-90.

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Epilogue were produced with exactly the Wife in mind, since they are meaningless in terms of the Shipman’s Tale or any of the other tales, which confirms – if such confirmation is at all needed – that in the initial sequence of tales the Wife of Bath was the one to follow the Sergeant of the Law’s Tale. John Fisher is the first editor to have inserted the Wife of Bath’s name in line 1179 in his 1977 Chaucer edition.102 “Now! goode men,” quod oure Hoste, “herkeneth me; Abydeth, for Goddes digne passioun, For we schal han a predicacioun; This Lollere heer wil prechen us somwhat.” “Nay, by my fader soule, that he schal nat!” Seyde the Wyf of Bathe, “Heer schal he nat preche: He schal no gospel glosen here ne teche. We leven alle in the grete God,” quod she; “He wolde sowen som difficulte, Or springen cokkel in our clene corn. And therefore, Hoost, I warne thee biforn, My joly body schal a tale telle, And schal clynken you so mery a belle, That I schal waken al this compaignie. But it schal nat ben of philosophie, Ne physlyas, ne termes queinte of lawe. Ther is but litel Latyn in my mawe!” [EpiMLT, 1172–90]

Much like the editors who overlooked the “joly body”, Fisher also misses out on one point, even if this is a relatively minor one. “By my fader soule” [1176] is out of character for the Wife of Bath. This should be “by my moder soule” or “by my dames soule”. In passing over this detail, he now introduces as a new and foreign element in the Canterbury Tales this sole mention of her father. Its presence is psychologically inconsistent with Chaucer’s picture of her as someone in perpetual arms against male authority, so that, obviously, we ought to forget all about it.103 For the rest, he is evidently right about the appropriateness of the link. Note how unsuited these lines are to the three pilgrims whose 102 John H. Fisher ed. The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer (NY/ London: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977), pp 101-02 and note 1179. 103 I am admittedly basing my argument on a version of her Prologue that was completed well after the writing of this link, but the evidence goes to underwrite the proposition that Chaucer’s conception of the Wife never changed substantially.

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names are inserted here in the various manuscripts – the ubiquitous Squire and the rare Shipman and Summoner. There is nothing to associate any of them with the gist of what is being promised here. Then contrast this with their perfect applicability to the Wife of Bath, even if she does not make an appearance in any single manuscript. Which of us does not remember her allergy to clerks presuming to preach, teach and “glosen” (a characteristic Wife-of-Bathism) the gospel to her? Note also the reference to cockle and corn and the way in which this calls to mind her remark about bren and flour [WBP 477–78]. Most of all, however, it is the final six or seven lines here that constitute a perfect passage from the Man of Law to the Wife. Her tale – that is, the now Shipman’s Tale, with or without some sort of prologue104 – is everything that is promised here. It is all about a woman’s “joly body” and graphic enough to make all the other pilgrims sit up straight in their saddles: she is announcing a rousing good tale with the promise of something salty thrown in for good measure. This is where the word “queinte” comes in, to prepare us for the way she uses it later. The only thing missing here is a response by the Host whereby she is accommodatingly invited to come forward with the experiences at which she is so obviously hinting. Upon consideration, does not this sound familiar somehow? We already possess this invitation, in much the same spirit, but have always overlooked it, because it does not come at the head of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue but 184 lines later. There we encounter an entirely natural transition from the Epilogue. The Pardoner has replaced the Host but for the rest one could not wish for anything smoother. By re-inserting the Host, we get this: “Dame, I wolde praye yow, if youre wyl it were,” Seyde oure goode Hooste, “as ye bigan, Telle forth youre tale, spareth for no man, And teche us yonge men of youre praktike.” [WBP 184-87]

This is exactly what is needed and so is the Wife’s reaction: “Gladly,” quod she, “sith it may yow like;” But yet I praye to al this compaignye, 104

If the Wife is referring to her Prologue, the thing to be kept in mind is that this was probably a much briefer exposé than her present one. If, on the other hand, she means her Tale, we should take this to refer to the Shipman’s Tale and not the Wife of Bath’s Tale as we know it.

102 | Towards Composing a Testament of Love If that I speke after my fantasye, As taketh not agrief of that I seye, For myn entente nys but for to pleye. Now, sire, now wol I telle forth my tale. [WBP 188-95]

What evidently happened is that, in a rather slapdash fashion, the Jovinian arguments on marriage were affixed to the original opening, leaving both the Epilogue to the Man of Law’s Tale and the Host’s invitation to the Wife dangling. The former was left like this, perhaps in the expectation of revision still to come; the latter was reassigned to the Pardoner. What I have attempted in the preceding pages is reconstruct the original transition from the Sergeant of the Law’s Tale (the Melibee) to the Wife of Bath’s tale of the Merchant of St Denis. As we know, both tales were replaced by new choices. This makes Fisher’s brave use of the Epilogue to link Man of Law and Wife a bridge too far. While perfectly suited to the old situation, it no longer applies to the later development of the Canterbury Tales. The Epilogue was evidently shelved along with the tales for which it was written. This is borne out by two major considerations. First, the Epilogue could easily have been adapted, without too much of an effort, to introduce the new Wife of Bath, but no such thing happened. Instead, we find the Host’s reaction rewritten to fit the Pardoner at line 184 of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, which seems a good indication that the old link had outserved its purpose. Then, there is the great puzzle why the two most natural candidates for being named in line 1179 – the Wife of Bath and her replacement the Shipman – get only a single vote among them in all the manuscripts. This is so surprising that one is tempted to assume a tradition among the early editors and scribes, possibly even stemming from some annotation found in Chaucer’s literary estate and proscribing its use for either Wife or Shipman. For the rest, the Epilogue appears to be an all-time editorial plaything. The early editors used the link to introduce the Squire without regard for its appropriateness, and for this reason they are the obvious suspects of having been the ones who carelessly rebuilt the Wife into a male narrator. Modern editors – aware that this link could not possibly be meant for the Squire, and proud of the clever detective work linking its “joly body” to that of the Shipman’s Tale – insert the Shipman’s name here. Of course, they have an ulterior motive here, a forgivable one, for the temptation is great. By making the Epilogue

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announce the Shipman as the next speaker, the text gets manipulated to accommodate the “Bradshaw shift”, a tale sequence that many editors appear to believe in but dare not apply in their editions. What they fail to consider is first of all why Chaucer should not have put in the Shipman here himself. In terms of manuscripts, at any rate, there is exceedingly little foundation for his inclusion. As we know, the link is used in this way only once, in the manuscript known as Bodl. Arch. Selden B.14 (SC 3360). Here, they are partially excused by the fact that the original name in the link was evidently removed by the early editors/scribes in order to insert the Squire. Worse is the fact that the editors blandly assume that the good reasons which we have for attributing the feminine narrative voice in the Shipman’s Tale to postponed revision must also apply to the Epilogue. They deduce from the Tale’s unrevised “joly body” reference that the identical phrase in the Epilogue requires a similar revision. This is unsound logic, since the status of the Epilogue plainly indicates that it was uncoupled from the tale that followed. This means that revision – if any such thing was envisaged for it – ought to have taken a divergent direction. What the editors do instead is admit the uncoupling and yet, by inserting the Shipman for the original Wife of Bath, recombine the Epilogue and the Wife’s old tale once again. Another interesting aspect of the Epilogue, to which its shelving is probably also related, is the Host’s little exchange of unpleasantries with the Parson, with the support of the Shipman/Wife of Bath. The Host invites him to come up with a tale, but is severely censured instead for his swearing in a passage that has become rather familiar: The Parson him answerde, “Benedicite! What eyleth the man, so synfully to swere?” Oure Host answerde, “O Jankyn, be ye there? I smelle a Lollere in the wynd,” quod he. “Now! goode men,” quod oure Hoste, “herkeneth me; Abydeth, for Goddes digne passioun, For we schal han a predicacioun; This Lollere heer wil prechen us somwhat.” “Nay, by my fader soule, that he schal nat!” Seyde the Shipman, “Heer he schal nat preche; He schal no gospel glosen here ne teche. We leven alle in the grete God,” quod he; “He wolde sowen som difficulte, Or springen cokkel in oure clene corn.” [EpiMLT, 1170-83]

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This Parson is a far cry from the man who concludes the Canterbury Tales. There he is a serious figure of harmony, drawing the entire fellowship together into a spiritual web to prepare all and sundry for the true viage of human existence. Here he is depicted as someone who is suggestive of politico-religious dissent and a moralist pest as well. While no one is claiming that the voices in the above passage represent Chaucer’s feelings on the subject, and the exchange of unpleasantries between Parson, Host and “Shipman” says more about the latter two than the Parson, it should at least be clear that this Parson is shown up as someone fallible, with evident weak points that are open to satire and serious criticism. The other Parson is a sacral person operating in a sacral function. This change of conception provides an interesting insight into the development of the Tales. The Epilogue Parson is unlike his portrait in the General Prologue or the one in the Parson’s. There he is not someone to elicit any hostility on the pilgrims’ part, as he does here, but figures as an idealized person of high spiritual authority. His appearance in the Epilogue cannot be a late piece of writing, among other things because it runs counter to the evidence of the Parson’s Prologue, which is plainly Chaucer’s last word on him. Within the Epilogue, which we assume to have belonged to the Sergeant of the Law, he figures as someone clashing with the Host and a Shipman who is easily shown up to be the replacement of the Wife of Bath, neither of which tallies with his final role as the spiritual father to the Tales. This makes him a retained figure rather than a new addition. This leaves us with two options. One is that, to judge by the General Prologue, the Epilogue Parson represents some intermediate stage of rewriting but was up for revision here, to be thrown out in favour of his original saintly alter ego’s reappearance in the Parson’s Tale, a tortuous yet not impossible construction. The other is that he reflects an originally less saintly Parson – a Lollard, possibly, to judge by the Host, who regrettably is not a truly perceptive person and therefore none too reliable a witness. But the Host’s suspicion is supported by the Wife (now the Shipman), whose hypocritical remark about “springen cokkel in oure clene corn” [WBP, 1183] may refer to Pope Gregory’s image of lollardry as lollium, cockle – a weed.105 Presumably, this Parson was dealt with in an earlier stage of the General 105

Jones, pp 222-23.

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Prologue along ironical lines befitting a piece of estate satire. Later, other considerations, such as Gower’s demand for a Testament of Love, caused Chaucer to recast him as pastor to the entire fellowship and even take time off to rewrite his picture in the General Prologue. . As Chaucer can be careless and tardy in his rewriting efforts, or at least apparently so, we might be tempted to pick the first option. Yet the simpler and better guess is in favour of the alternative and for this, too, there are good arguments. What revisional changes may Chaucer not have effected that were so surgically precise that we have never noticed them? There are clear signs that, when his heart was in it, he was perfectly capable of reworking his material while leaving only faint internal traces of any such thing ever having happened. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, as we shall dissect them in chapters to come, are a good instance of this. More importantly, whereas the other pilgrims are dealt with in terms of estate satire, not so the Parson and his virtuous brother the Ploughman. We do not know what Chaucer had in mind for the latter beyond providing a spiritual contrast, but it is clear that the two of them want his satirical touch and it is this, more than anything else, that suggests that the Epilogue Parson is a leftover from the original situation. Such satire is, after all, manifest here in the Epilogue: the Parson is perceived to be a Lollard and in the rather sharp but funny clash that ensues neither the Host nor the Wife of Bath bandy any words on making it clear to all and sundry how they feel about such fundamentalists. In other words, we had best take the Parson’s portrait in the General Prologue as a piece of rewriting, done in order to make it tally with his new part in the Parson’s Prologue, and regard his part in the Epilogue to the Man of Law’s Tale as a moment frozen in time, felicitously recording traces of a discarded stage of development. It is something that is supported by the unspecific and hazy description which is accorded to his brother the Ploughman and is best understood by assuming that this pilgrim was provisionally sketched in, no doubt with the popular Piers in mind, at a time when Chaucer’s attention was chiefly fixed upon the Parson. More spectacular support for a rewriting of the Parson’s part in the General Prologue into something non-satirical may be found in Chaucer’s triple assertion there of the Parson being an “ensample”.106 106

Larry Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994), p 8.

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The thought that this should be related to Gower’s challenge finds no mean backing when Chaucer writes This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf, That first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte. [GenProl, 496-97]

This is a clear and exceedingly close textual echo from the Confessio: Crist wroghte ferst and after tawhte So that the dede his word arawhte; [explained] He yaf ensample in his persone, And we the wordes have al one. [ConfAm, Book V, 1825-28]

The sentiment is from Matthew 5:19, which says that “whoever shall do and teach [the commandments], the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven”. Gower applies this to Christ and Chaucer to the Parson, yet it is clear that Chaucer comes very close to Gower in seeking to confer an exemplary status on the Parson that makes him very Christ-like. And of course it is clear that their way of phrasing things is entirely too similar to be accidental. The sentiment may have been proverbial. Yet to find a virtually identical choice of words in a similar context is remarkable. When this is followed three times by the additional incursion of the word ensample, the firm implication is that Chaucer took his cue here from the Confessio. This suggests that the Parson’s portrait must be interpreted as referring back to Gower’s Priest, at the same time giving us a very interesting indication as to the date of inclusion of these lines: 1390 or soon after. A belated point to be made about the exchange of hostilities between the Parson, the Host and the “Shipman” is that it calls to mind the many other moments when the pilgrims get into one another’s hair. Such clashes are an almost ritual phase leading up to a retaliatory telling of tales. Accepting that the Wife of Bath was the true pilgrim intended here, this gives us an interesting indication of an earlier stage of the Tales figuring a clash between herself and one of the clerics – an idea to which we shall return in the coming chapters. Here the implication is that our Lollard Parson may well have been meant to come back soon with a tale properly conducive to put the Wife in her proper Christian place. This cannot have been the present Parson’s Tale, which would have effectively killed the entire narrative effort of the Tales well before the end. If Chaucer had at all arrived at

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a tale for him at the time, there are only a few real options here, such as perhaps the Clerk’s Tale. An indication that we are correctly interpreting the retaliatory atmosphere of the Man of Law’s Epilogue is further found in the Parson’s attack on the Host’s swearing. This is echoed later, in what we may designate as the basic Testament of Love, in the Pardoner’s very similar attack on the Host. It is something that calls to mind Hinckley’s suggestion that “the [Pardoner’s] Tale was originally intended for the Parson rather than for the Pardoner”.107 At any rate, the basic clash here shows that, once having got hold of a good idea, Chaucer was most unwilling to let go of it and perfecty prepared to wait until the next opportunity came along. Doubtless the present non-status of the Man of Law’s Epilogue is bound up as much with Chaucer’s changing conception of the Sergeant of the Law as well as the Parson and the Wife of Bath. Hence, the rewriting of their parts may well be closely related solutions, both as to their purpose and to the time when this took place. If the Parson’s Tale gave Chaucer the groundwork for a Testament of Love, it was the re-invented Man of Law with his rewritten Introduction which enabled him to move several steps closer to compliance with Gower’s terms. As his first and near-explicit reaction to Gower, it serves as an unmistakable signal that the contest was on. For Chaucer to have got truly close to a Testament of Love, though, something more brilliant was needed and for this he had the Wife of Bath standing in the wings, but only after reassigning her then tale to the Shipman. All the elements capable of accounting for the Epilogue’s unsatisfactory status turn out to be so interwoven that it is a likely assumption that the changes with which they are associated were more or less concurrent. We may note in this connection that the Wife, Pardoner and Parson are the only three whose speeches are sermons constructed out of confession joined to an exposition of the Deadly Sins, in what must probably be seen as a reflection of the similar composition of the Confessio Amantis. This suggests a very close relation, far exceeding that of the Man of Law’s Tale or any of the others. Another interesting point about the Wife and the Parson is the 107

Hinckley, Notes on Chaucer (1907; Northampton, Mass: Haskell House, 1970), pp 157-58. He plausibly argues that the Pardoner basically tells “an honest straightforward sermon”, but fails to come up with convincing reasons why it should have belonged to the Parson.

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presumable rewriting of their portraits in the General Prologue, as something that resulted from the same motive and may have been simultaneously put into effect. The implication of all this is that Chaucer’s reply to Gower in the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale constitutes the pivotal point of all that happened to the subsequent tales with their almost explosive transformation into something far surpassing Chaucer’s original conception. It is from this point onward that we see the emergence of his true Testament of Love. This is, of course, facilitated by the Parson’s Tale, even if this is not an answer but a means to come up with one. By and large, the Man of Law’s Tale and its links are a recognizable improvement on Gower, but not something truly inspired, except in their entertaining and slightly malicious portrayal of someone who may be Gower himself. They convincingly comply with several major elements that are required for a Testament of Love, notably their contribution of a reply to the challenge as well as a Gower tale and its theme of unrelenting virtue for an answer. What is lacking is a resounding demonstration of superior wits and the presence of lots of deadly sin to complement Custance’s rather forbidding virtuousness. Textually, the remarkable thing about Fragment II (B1), including the Man of Law’s Epilogue, is its association with all the major upheavals in both the Canterbury tale sequence. True, there is postponed revision elsewhere, tale links are lacking in several places and a good many tales are simply wanting. Yet it is in this place that we find major indicators for tale shifts indicating 1) a new, reduced and linear plan for the entire Canterbury effort, 2) a new deal for the Man of Law, 3) a new approach to the Wife of Bath, and 4) the involvement of the Parson in this, all of which it is possible to relate, or should I say impossible not to relate, to the Confessio Amantis. Dating the Testament of Love Chaucer’s reaction to Gower in the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale points directly to the 1390 version of the Confessio Amantis, since this is the only place where its text refers to Chaucer. It was dropped in Gower’s second version, taken to have seen the light of day “in the fourteenth year of King Richard”, which gives us June 21,

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1390 at the earliest and June 20, 1391 at the latest.108 It was also absent from the final version of 1392-93, which was in Richard’s sixteenth regnal year and possessed a revised prologue to complement the revised conclusion.109 It is perfectly possible that Chaucer should have been familiar with all three versions or that the eliminated “tribute” of the second and third versions could have contributed added impetus to Chaucer’s reply, all depending on when he learnt about this. Yet the only one that we can be sure of is the first, as this is plainly what the Man of Law’s reply is all about. Before we go on, let us briefly consider the disappearing accolade. It is missing in the intermediate and final redactions of the Confessio Amantis. Its absence has often been interpreted as a falling-out between Chaucer and Gower. While Fisher argues the exact opposite, one hesitates to side with him on this point. At issue is a duel of writing wits, which need not have been an antagonistic thing, but the competitive spirit that speaks from Chaucer’s way of dealing with Gower is unmistakable. Now that we have a better overview of the issues involved, it is rather clear that Chaucer’s strike at Gower’s “immoral” tales suggests a certain chill in the air. So does his shifting away of the Melibee with its implication that this was because of its associability with Gower, through the Sergeant of the Law, and that the latter’s overtures to Henry of Derby had made him unsuited for the presentation of a tale of the Fürstenspiegel type. And what about the recurrent indications that we seem to have of a lack of access to the Confessio or, perhaps, a refusal to make use of it, as attested by the dearth of verbal echoes even in the tales which demonstrably follow Gower? Here, however, it may be that Gower, too, basically acquainted his public with his book through the medium of readings, selected or otherwise, and that this was how Chaucer got to know the work at large, which would explain much. Our best option is to take the disappearance of Gower’s challenge in the later versions as simple corroboration of the existence and passing of a brief literary fad. Once past by mid-1391, its traces were eliminated as a matter of honour – rules of the game – or simple convenience. Exactly the same thing happened with the Daisy or Marguerite aspects of the Legend when the new G-Prologue was composed – a correspondence which is too good for coincidence and 108 109

Fisher, p 117. Fisher, pp 116-24.

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ought to make us pause and wonder. It provides not only a good explanation of an otherwise puzzling aspect of the Confessio but links up exceedingly well with the curious goings-on in the Canterbury Tales at the very same time. To this let me add that, even if Chaucer’s contest with Gower were to have been a private thing, this was not an exclusive matter. There were still his presumed reading sessions and still those among his audience with ears to hear and minds to understand what he was saying. This does not exhaust our possibilities. Another option is Fisher’s idea that there was a political dimension involved. When we look at the second version of the Confessio, we note that not just the reference to Chaucer was dropped but also the book’s dedication to Richard. Finding both the original dedicatee and co-dedicatee gone at the same time, Fisher infers that this is not by pure chance. He feels that Richard was removed because Gower, who was ultimately to be the great apologist for Henry of Lancaster’s usurpation, was about to join the latter’s camp and the address to Chaucer, as someone belonging to the other side, was removed out of consideration for either. The third and final version of the Confessio, presumably some two to three years after the first, turns out to have been completely rededicated, this time to Henry. Plainly, Gower could not have done so yet prominently retain his “compliments” to someone on the other side of the political spectrum. Fisher even speaks of an act of consideration: retaining Chaucer while excising Richard could have made the former vulnerable to the king’s displeasure.110 There is every reason to question this interpretation. To begin with, the simultaneous disappearance of Richard and Chaucer need not have been connected or at least not along these lines. There is no evidence for Fisher’s conjecture and his logic here looks feeble. The exact contours of Chaucer’s duties with respect to Richard may be difficult to get a good grip on but whether out “on loan” or otherwise, he must primarily have been a Gaunt loyalist and a Lancastrian at heart. As such, he was always in a position to bet on two horses – Richard as the King whom Gaunt supported and Henry as the eventual King whom he must have known well enough through his connections with the Lancaster household and who, upon his accession, showed himself to be well able to reward a loyal Lancastrian. Thus, there need 110

Fisher, pp 119-20.

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not have been any political reason for Gower to excise him from the Confessio or to go in for any acts of consideration. In fact, he was the one who was staking his life and fortune on a gamble that Henry was the next king to be, if his early support is not an ex post facto interpolation. If history had gone different, he might have well have hung from the highest tree or worse. What Fisher further forgets to take into account, even if this is a lesser option, is that the excision of the Chaucer passage could have been been a damnatio memoriae of someone who had come to represent part of the opposition. Finally, there is the consideration that Gower’s words to Chaucer are hardly a matter of “compliments”, which in its own way negates Fisher’s argument. As Fisher sees it, the only clear and immediate occasion for Gower’s break with Richard lies in the events of late 1392 when the king attempted to pressurize the Londoners into parting with a huge sum of money. This is a tempting view. The preceding years had been calm and stable, he points out, and show no particular cause for him to have turned away from Richard. Here comes the sticky point, however. One of the problems is with the date of 1391 (“hic in anno quartodecimo Regis Ricardi”) that is derived from a Latin sidenote in some of the intermediate and final versions. Fisher resolves this by proposing that the annotation was meant to refer to the original version’s date of 1390, which falls within Richard’s fourteenth year of rule, and does not apply to the time of the revision.111 While this makes the reference rather pointless, Fisher also glosses over the fact that, if we are to believe Gower, his transferral of loyalty had been in the making for quite a while, not as a hasty decision but as something that went through a number of stages. Thus we find that, while the first version of the Confessio is dedicated to Richard with due flattery, eight of the constituent manuscripts of this redaction include a brief second dedication at the end, this time to Henry of Derby:112 Derbeie Comiti, recolunt quem laude periti, Vade liber purus, sub eo requiesce futurus. 111

Fisher, pp 119-20. Peter Nicholson, “The Dedications of Gower’s Confessio Amantis”, Mediaevalia, 10 (1984): 159-79, at 159. Derek Pearsall, ‘The Manuscripts and Illustrations of Gower’s Works’, in Echard, pp 73-97, at 93-94. Pearsall mentions their number as seven. The Latin translates as: To the Earl of Derby, whom the wise [or experts, learned] honour with praise, Go, fair book; reside under him henceforward.

112

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The appearance of the Latin dedication in the first version and the disappearance of the dedication to Richard in the second amply predate the 1392 affair, indicating that Gower was already weighing his options and preparing for the final step. Peter Nicholson, who also rejects Fisher’s conjecture on the London affair, regards the double dedication as a guileless one, arguing that this was not uncommon and that at this time Henry was no focus of rivalry with Richard, as this crystallized only at the end of the decade.113 But this seems altogether too mild on either. Henry had been one of the four barons to terrorize (the word is used advisedly) the Ricardian scene as briefly ago as 1388, which can hardly have endeared him to Richard or failed to make an impression on Gower.114 By way of brief explanation: the King’s mismanagement of the baronial conflict into which he had manoeuvred himself in the preceding years and the brief flurry of civil war in 1387 had led to a coup of sorts. This enabled the opposition under Gloucester and the Earls of Arundel, Warwick and Derby (the Lords Appellant) to control Parliament in 1388, since known as the “Merciless Parliament”, and force a checkmated King to surrender some of his staunchest supporters to their deadly vindictiveness. This was when Thomas Usk and Brembre were executed, as well as several members of the royal household, which can hardly have endeared any of the Lords to the King and must have rankled deeply. It is not very likely that the next ten years should have made Henry less ambitious or desirous to obtain a power base at home. The inferences to be drawn from the fact that Richard struck back at his tormentors in 1397 after almost a decade and sought to actively curtail Henry’s influence when Gaunt died by impounding his inheritance and banishing him are as clear as daylight. There was no forgive-and113

Nicholson, Dedications, p 185ff. Nicholson here sketches Henry’s role as Lord Appellant as a reluctant fourth (Dedications, pp 169-70). The fact that Henry acted fully counter to his father’s policy of supporting the throne rather contradicts any such view and suggests someone bent to make his mark in the face of all opposition. In this context, Nicholson’s remark that “Even Gower, in the Cronica Tripertita, plays down [Henry’s] role in the events of 1387-88” (p 169) seems ill-advised. Nothing would have been more natural for Gower, as an enthousiastic apologist for Henry, than to minimize his patron’s earlier efforts to undermine Richard’s rule and turn him into a long-suffering loyalist at heart. Other accounts from the same time that suggest that Henry was only half-heartedly involved similarly stand to be ex post facto whitewashing of an active participant. Propaganda is not a modern invention. 114

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forget scenario here: Henry was still a danger to the throne and Richard was attempting to immobilize him by undercutting his finances. Thus Gower’s addition of dedicatory lines to Henry in 1390-91 are probably exactly as they appear to us: offensive to the King and in none too good taste. His address to Henry in the third redaction (139293) is worse and close to treason in its outspokenness. Here, however, as Terry Jones and his co-authors point out, is a good chance that this is not authentic but an interpolation postdating Henry’s accession.115 Then there is Gower’s implicit reference in the 1390 version to Thomas Usk, which seems a good guideline to suppose that the roots of his dissatisfaction with Richard II must have lain further back.116 As a politically astute operator, perhaps shocked by the death of friends and a fellow-writer, and – who knows – having been in fear of his own life (he had after all written up Richard with considerable fawning in the Vox clamantis), Gower must have been naturally upset by the facility with which loyal service and royal servants could be thrown to the wolves. He may have decided that there were more powerful forces in the realm than the King himself. The events must have made him well aware of the risks and uncertainties of continuing to serve such a beleaguered ruler nor would it have taken much discernment for him to see that the King was headed for further disaster. What he did, therefore, was look for a more dependable princely patron and, sensing well which way the winds of change were blowing, he lit upon Henry of Lancaster as his “oghne lord”. All the same, it seems somewhat shortsighted to interpret his actions as inspired by political issues only. There may have been other reasons for his disaffection. Greed and ambition are powerful aspects of the picture that even such a sympathetic biographer as Fisher sketches. Thus, Gower’s career during the years of Edward III’s reign appears to have been quite prosperous, both in terms of acquisition of property and, assuming that he is the “Goverus” whom we encounter in the next chapter, the very sort of legal offices that we find referred to in the Sergeant of the Law’s portrait. Yet what if Richard II’s succession had not turned out so rewarding and preferment somehow continued to elude his grasp? We have no direct information on this point, as the Year Books involved are wanting, but it looks as if his social progress under 115 116

Jones, pp 97-103. For a sympathetic sketch of Richard, see Sherborne, pp 19-20.

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Richard was chiefly literary and nothing in the nature of advancement to desirable posts and functions.117 It is certainly not an uncommon fact of life for those in favour with a ruling king to find themselves eclipsed in the reign of his successor. Was Gower’s flight from John Ball’s horde in the days of the young King’s need held against him or was it the whisper of his bribability?118 Was the King desirous to rid himself of some of his father’s entourage or was a conservative like Gower simply not reçu? We shall probably never know but it is not an unlikely thought that matters such as these were involved. As Gower himself would have pointed out, this is the way the Wheel of Fortune turns. In support of this reading, there is of course the historically attested fact that Gower’s fortunes took a turn for the better, once Henry had taken over. Gower’s literary output saw an upswing, even if this was rather in terms of minor rewriting and reassemblage of earlier work than new efforts. There was even, for the first time since the death of Edward III, a regular royal stipend in the shape of two pipes of Gascony wine,119 though this looks rather symbolical and not exactly suggestive of any great royal enthusiasm. To return to the subject of dating, the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale provides us with a terminus a quo, fixing the earliest date of Chaucer’s reaction at 1390. If, as some scholars feel, Chaucer may have had advance access to the Confessio, his knowledge of its ending would contribute to clarifying the fashion in which the F-Prologue to the Legend seems to anticipate the terms of Gower’s challenge.120 What is at issue here, however, is not so much the earliness of the Introduction but its presumed lateness. Given the date of 1390 for the challenge and allowing for all sorts of distracting factors, such as – possibly – his work on the Treatise on the Astrolabe,121 the natural situation for Chaucer would nevertheless have been a reaction within a 117

This is of course a curious thing to have happened and one suspects that their disappearance is linked to Henry’s irregular occupation of the throne. 118 The incident is described in the Vox clamantis. See also William Woods, England in the Age of Chaucer (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1976), pp 183-84. On the bribability matter, see Chapter Three. 119 Fisher, pp 68, 342; Nicholson, The Dedications, p 171. 120 Benson, p 854. Advance knowledge of some of the tales to appear in the Confessio is another matter. It certainly does not seem impossible for the two of them to have exchanged sources and ideas during the late eighties. 121 Benson, p 1092. There is no clarity as to the date of its writing and 1390, which is usually given for it, is purely a guess.

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short space of time, particularly if there should have been a measure of court pressure behind it. His response is directed at the first version of the Confessio and it therefore looks unlikely that much time should have passed since the challenge. “Wasn’t there something like a challenge by John Gower a number of years ago?” is hardly the sort of exciting impetus to have moved Chaucer in the fashion that we encounter. Thus, a good date for the Introduction would be mid to late 1390. Its prickliness and anti-Gower drift suggest that its composition must have followed close upon Gower’s challenge. However, to judge by the manner in which the Introduction ends, announcing a tale in prose, he had not yet come up with the idea of inserting the tale of Custance. Instead, he left the Man of Law with the original tale, wellsuited to him for being pompously “wise” and dealing with wise advice for princes, as well as complying with the virtue/vice requirements of a Testament of Love. Such a date is somewhat problematic in the light of the Legend of Good Women. The evidence being that Chaucer’s first reaction was to have another go at this, we must allow for some time, from just a few days (we have no way of knowing how fast a worker he was) to a month or two at least, to have passed before Chaucer turned to the Canterbury Tales instead. This would make the latter half of 1390 or even early 1391 a better date. Yet once we move beyond the Introduction we run into problems again. The evidence of a retained Melibee that we deduce from the Introduction tallies well with the consideration that during the months to follow, Chaucer’s attention – insofar as it was not claimed by the writing of the Treatise on the Astrolabe, for which the same period has been proposed – must have been fully taken up by the challenge of coming up with something superior to the Confessio Amantis, which cannot have been a simple job. It may have involved a tidying of the various sources that went into the making of the Parson’s Tale. It certainly meant the addition of the Retraction as well as a thorough reconstruction of the Wife-Pardoner situation, which, as is the case with the Man of Law and as I discuss in Chapter Four, seems to have gone through more than one revisional stage. Indeed, the replacement of the Melibee by the Man of Law’s Tale provides good support for assuming a return to this place. This means that, even if we accept that Chaucer may have been a fast worker with ample time on his hands at this time, there may be good ground to stretch things to well into 1391. The ultimate date here

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is June 1391, by which time the challenge was removed from the Confessio and we must assume the Testament of Love to have been completed, presented to a live audience and done with. This implies that some extensive writing must have taken place before Chaucer was able to get his reply truly moving, even if some of it was not new. But if all this was a court game, the short-lived nature of such entertainments, particularly one of this kind, would have made it a major requirement that it be presented before the court’s interest waned. More than a year for him to produce his reply is out of the question. One way of solving this would have been for him to produce a Testament in instalments and this may well be what actually happened. However, this would not have given him much extra time. The snag is that the tales that make up the Testament exhibit so much interrelated revision that we can only conclude that Chaucer did not come up with his presentation until it was as good as finished. In other words, something like mid-1391 may have been the actual date of presentation, though in the light of his penchant for irony surely April must have been the preferred month and Easter the preferred moment. If this is correct, it also means that we have run into a measure of dating trouble. We have seen that there are good reasons to believe that the Man of Law’s Introduction represents the state of things shortly after Chaucer gave up work on the G-Prologue and opted in favour of the Canterbury Tales as his Testament of Love. This means that the G-Prologue cannot be much later than 1390. The problem is that the critics generally assign it to 1394 or after. Yet once we take a closer look at this dating, it turns out to be solely based upon the assumption that Queen Anne’s name was deleted as a result of her death in 1394. Its solitary nature seems a feeble argument. A better reason for its disappearance is the passing of the Daisy cult which the FPrologue celebrates with the Queen at its centre. The G-Prologue is manifestly concerned with removing its most obvious traces and it is entirely logical that, with John Gower as its provisional new target, Anne’s name should have been eliminated as well.122 As I have pointed out, this may have been part of the rules of the game. These considerations alone would be sufficient, but it also strikes me as significant in a context where Chaucer was asked to pro122

In Gower’s second version of the Confessio Amantis the royals are similarly eliminated. If this had taken place in 1394, the critics would no doubt attribute this to Anne’s death as well.

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duce his testament of love that he removed the daisy from the position which it had in the F-Prologue. Of course he was attempting to deal with Gower, but was not something more involved? Was not Gower’s call for a testament of love and is it not remarkable that the “margarite” also figures as the central symbol in Usk’s Testament of Love? Perhaps this ought to be rephrased: in view of Usk’s enthusiastic borrowing from Chaucer or rather his embroidering on Chaucer’s themes,123 is not his “margarite” as a central symbol similarly suggestive of a Chaucerian derivation? The identification by Shoaf and his team of the “margarite” as “pearl” is remarkable in its neglect or disregard of Chaucer’s celebration of the Daisy/Marguerite in the FPrologue to the Legend of Good Women as a thematic source. Thus, one of the most obvious ones of Chaucer-Usk links is simply left lying fallow. Yet it is here that the 1402 portrait of Chaucer comes in again, as promised. Its emblematic use of the marguerite and juxtaposition to his coat of arms after his death or, as others wish, at the end of his career strongly suggest that this was a potent association.124 What this means is inescapable: contrary to what we have been taught, Chaucer’s part in the Daisy cult must have been an important one, so much so in fact that it still could serve as an honourable and time-honoured badge after a quarter of a century. Reasoning from this point of departure, we must interpret Usk’s “margarite” to be in the nature of a sine Chaucer non and a truly deserving matter for further study. It is well possible therefore that, even without Gower’s prompting, deference alone to Usk’s fate might have been sufficient for Chaucer to remove from the poem what now had become a hateful association. All the same, as we have seen, there are also other reasons imaginable that may have contributed to its elimination. In particular, there is a suggestion of a certain disillusionment with the Ricardian court and Ricardian rule that accords well with feelings which he may have entertained about the way in which Usk had become a sacrificial victim to the times. That something like this was involved is clear from lines 341 in the Legend’s G-Prologue (which dwell on a king’s duties in a fashion that is reminiscent of the writing in Gower’s three major works and particularly Book VII of the Confessio) and the even stronger sentiment addressed to Richard in his balade Lak of Stedfastnesse, which 123 124

Shoaf, passim. Jones, pp 296-318.

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presumably stems from the same period.125 All the same, it is most unlikely – out of the question even, in my opinion – that Chaucer should at any time have followed Gower and sided with Henry during Richard’s reign. Such a step is contradicted by historical fact or, more precisely, the inferences that we draw from history. When inspecting the story of Chaucer’s life, one cannot fail to deduce from it a close and personal loyalty and fealty to John of Gaunt. Everything that we know about his life argues in favour of this. His wife Philippa’s ties with Gaunt as a former mistress and her sister’s status as Gaunt’s acknowledged mistress and wife ultimately hint at an intricate tangling of webs. They also indicate, in the light of the relationships involved, that Chaucer may have been very close to Gaunt and served as his envoy at the royal court. There, even if and when officially employed by Richard, he would still have been seen as Gaunt’s man. Even the often remarked-upon hints of Lollard leanings on his part could lie in Gaunt’s espousal of the Lollard cause during the ’seventies. Pearsall makes light of any truly close connection, but in fact it is well-supported by the regular grants and annuities which he received from Gaunt during his later life.126 It would certainly explain a number of ups and downs in his career which in more than one instance seem to coincide with Gaunt’s absences from the country.127 Gaunt, however, always figures as a loyal supporter of the throne. If he sympathized at all with his son’s ambitions, there is little hint of this in either the annals or his conduct throughout the years of Richard’s reign. In this connection, it may be worth remembering that Henry did not make his move against Richard until well after his father’s death. On Chaucer’s part, his Lak of Stedfastnesse and the passage addressed to the King in the G-Prologue are good evidence that he had not given up on Richard. As we know, this way of reviewing the evidence also accounts for Chaucer’s apparent transference of loyalty to Henry when, after 125

Robinson, pp 844-45 note 341, 862. Pearsall, pp 82-83. 127 Gaunt’s absence from 1386-89, for instance, left Chaucer without his patron and appears to have made him more or less officeless during this time. His brief time in Parliament may be ascribed to his ties with Gaunt, too, for whom he possibly acted in a caretaker function. Coghill (p 14) attributes his lack of employment to the fact that Gloucester, who was effectively in power at the time, “had never been a patron of the poet”. Chaucer’s close ties to Gaunt seem a likelier explanation. Terry Jones et.al. suggest that he simply lay low during this time, pp 309-10. 126

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Gaunt’s death, the latter made his power bid and deposed Richard. There need be no betrayal here or shifting of allegiances, as long as we allow Chaucer to have always served the head of the House to the best of his ability and to have continued to do so when Henry came to replace his father. His acclamation of Henry’s accession to the throne in the Envoy to the Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse, in which he hails him as “verray king” by “line and free eleccion”, is arguably readable as a natural effusion from a loyal Lancastrian, even if a closer reading makes one wonder. Similarly, Henry’s royal gesture of doubling Chaucer’s annuity on his coronation day is readily understood from this point of view, even if half of it was money owing to him, the actual payments were not forthcoming quickly and the gift itself backdated so as to put Henry in a more favourable light. Both the time and measure of Henry’s largesse, if such it was, could indicate a rewarding of a loyal retainer of the House, but we should not make too much of this. Several interpretations are possible here, some of them contradictory, the most negative of which is to see this as a move to appear generous toward one of the major voices of the previous regime or even as a bribe for someone struggling to come to terms with Richard’s lot.128 Perhaps the fairest interpretation of the situation is to assume that both Henry and Chaucer were going through the motions in an exploratory way, without any great liking for one another. As I have pointed out, it is not very probable that someone of Henry’s lineage would have been pleased to be related to an upstart commoner who could actually claim to be his stepuncle through his father’s misalliance with a former mistress. On Chaucer’s part, loyalty to Gaunt, Richard and all those who in 1388 were victimized by Henry and his fellow-Appellants must have been a major obstacle for him to have warmly welcomed Henry’s rule ten years later. Thus, if he remained Gaunt’s man to the very end, which is highly probable, any dislike of Richard’s rule – if at all there – must have been subservient to Gaunt’s public policy of supporting Richard’s throne. There is no saying what different loyalties either of them may have entertained in their hearts, but this is what the record states. Gaunt appears throughout as an honorable man, fully in tune with the chivalric ideals of the times, and with a warm heart for the well-being of the realm. This makes it most 128

See R.F. Yeager, To His Purse: 373-414. He convincingly argues that Chaucer’s “Complaint” postdates Richard’s murder and is implicitly unsupportive of Henry.

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unlikely for Chaucer to have sided with Gower in any anti-Ricardian fashion and shows that there is no convincing ground to follow Fisher and extend the dating of the Testament of Love to the 1392 London affair, which is an implausible proposition anyhow. This leads us back to our earlier choice of mid-1391 at the latest. Now this tallies extremely well with the date of Gower’s excision of his lines to Chaucer in his second redaction of the Confessio Amantis. So what if their disappearance should not be political at all but rather more naturally a matter poetical? If we take Gower’s call for a Testament of Love as an invitation to a literary court game, its absence in the later versions may well be read as a natural indication that the game had taken place and Gower had now turned to different concerns. We have seen the same thing with respect to the Daisy cult of the Legend of Good Women and, as we shall see, the Wife of Bath’s Tale, the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale and the tale shifts which they involve carry the same implication. Thus, this study favours mid-1391 as the ultimate time of Chaucer’s Testament of Love and will accordingly adhere to this in the pages to come, while rejecting any political dimension suggestive of a later date. The selfsame dating issue is something that we also run into in other places. Thus, another major source used for dating some of our tales is Chaucer’s intensive use of St Jerome’s Epistola adversus Jovinianum, which once again provides a late date – this time put around 1395-96 by Benson.129 Reference to this work is found in the Legend as well as the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner, which nicely links them together in excellent support of my theory or would do so, if it were not for this date. A closer look, however, shows us that the lateness is both inflated and unproven, since the dating turns out to be based solely on his mention of Jerome in the G-Prologue to the Legend and the dubious date that we have found assigned to it. Thus, while aware of the intricacies of dating Chaucer’s writings, we had best define Chaucer’s use of the Epistola as indicative of a date around 1390. One further work associated with the Man of Law is Innocent III’s De miseria humane condicionis, elements of which were used in his Prologue and his Tale. The “period from 1390 to 1394-95” is how this is dated by Benson.130 In terms of what we have found, the utmost limit is mid-391, while the years of 1394 and 1395 are out of the ques129 130

Benson, pp 864, 1063 note G 268-312. Benson, pp 856-57.

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tion. It will come as no surprise that, here too, it is the G-Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, which claims for Chaucer a translation under the title “Of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde”, that provides this date.131 Let us therefore also register his work on De miseria as more likely to belong to 1390 or thereabouts. A special point to be made here, underscored by its reference to De miseria, is that the inclusion of the Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale stems from this approximate date. From the time of his switch to the Canterbury Tales as the answer to Gower’s challenge we may assume Chaucer to have concentrated upon coming up with his Testament of Love. With all the work that this involved and possibly the writing of the Astrolabe besides, it is hard to accept that he could have been engaged at the same time upon constructing (or adapting) the prologue and tale of Custance (as a single work) to fit a pilgrim who, by dint of its mercantile stanzas, cannot have been the Man of Law. What we deduce from this is that Chaucer fell back here on a tale that was already written for a sententious voice, probably already included in the Canterbury Tales, and therefore easily assignable to a kindred spirit. This would fix its composition at a date before mid-1390 and its inclusion into the Testament as belonging to the first half of 1391. Something similar in the way of unreliable dating may be reported for the date of 1393, to which Robinson and Benson frequently refer in connection with the Wife of Bath. This is the year of Deschamps’ Miroir de mariage, which Chaucer is assumed by Lowes to have known and used. This is entirely conjectural and, as Benson admits, the likelihood is that Chaucer never had a chance to consult it.132 Thus, deference to received opinion simply leads us round in circles and produces unreliable results. Within the parameters of the Canterbury Tales there is not a single trusty piece of dating evidence for any of the tales and links involved in this study save the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, which, through its links with the first version of the Confessio, gives us 1390 as the only date that we can be relatively sure of. This is why, in these chapters, I shall stick to a date for the Testament of Love no later than mid-1391, while assuming a rough date of 1390 for Chaucer’s work on the G-Prologue of the Legend (and consequently an even earlier one for De miseria humane condicionis and the Epistola adversus Jovinianum) and the Introduc131 132

Benson, p 1065 note G 414. Benson, pp 864; Robinson, p 698.

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tion to the Man of Law’s Tale. If this runs counter to traditionally “established” fact, it may nonetheless be noted that it is well within the modern limits set for the presumed dates of inclusion of the tales involved and the writing of their links. They are all assigned to the same general period, which, if we are to believe Benson, means that they could all be as early as 1390 and as late as 1394-95.133 For a final bit of argument, let me point to the textual correspondences and internal associations that seem to interconnect everything. Assuming that they attest to a certain contemporaneity and that all borrowing from the Confessio is from its first redaction, we find that the Retraction, inseparable from the Parson’s Tale, echoes a line in the Legend’s G-Prologue. This prologue is also believed to refer to the Confessio in a number of places. Its Balade is echoed by the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, which refers directly to the Confessio Amantis. The presence of the Man of Law’s Tale is both relatable to the Confessio and to several tale shifts, namely those of the Melibee, the Wife’s old tale (now the Shipman’s), the Parson’s and possibly more. It is also relatable to the inclusion of the Pardoner’s Tale and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. The latter’s Tale is borrowed from Gower and can be shown to contain textual echoes from the Confessio. Similar echoes and structural correspondences with the Parson’s Tale go to show that the Wife’s Prologue and Tale and the Pardoner’s were produced very closely upon the composition of the Parson’s Tale. The Parson’s portrait in the General Prologue indicates through a triple echo that it was (re)written under the influence of the Confessio Amantis. Thus everything comes together.

133

Benson, pp 854-57, 864, 872, 904-05, 956-57.

3. The Sergeant and Man of Law as Gower The Identity of the Sergeant and Man of Law Much of what we have discussed so far is closely bound up with the demotion of the Sergeant of the Law to a mere Man of Law, a matter that we have noted before as an instance of Chaucer changing his mind on a pilgrim’s stature. In the Man of Law’s case this is a demotion from being one of the mightiest men of the realm to what is implied by his being a “man of law” – just a lawyer. Instead of being one of the truly great, he is someone whose claim to being a man of culture is made a point of sport by the errors that he makes.1 Joseph Hornsby writes that sergeant was still used loosely in Chaucer’s day and might be applied to “a pleader in another court as well the more prestigious king’s sergeant”.2 True, but Chaucer’s portrait in the General Prologue is uncompromising: his Sergeant is precisely such a prestigious personage. It is here that we stand to get our best taste of the spirit of Chaucer’s acknowledgement. If we are reading it right, it is not a truly accommodating one, yet precisely the sort of response that one expects in well-fought duel. The point, in elaboration of an earlier suggestion by Fisher, is that the Man of Law, as presented in the Introduction, could well be a tongue-in-cheek portrait of Gower. Fisher rejects his own notion because he believes it to be inconsistent with the sketch provided by the General Prologue.3 As it is, the inconsistency that he claims to see is just not there, which leaves the field wide open to accepting the Sergeant as a sardonic sketch of Gower from the very first. Yet let us be clear on two things here. One is that, however welcome such corroboration, it does not constitute a linchpin for this study’s main argument and my readers are welcome to reject it as they 1

On the Man of Law’s errors, cf Fisher, pp 287-89; Scala: 17; Rodney Delasanta, ‘Great Reverence’: 288-310. 2 Joseph Hornsby, ‘A Sergeant of the Lawe, War and Wyse’, in: Laura C. Lambdin and R.T. Lambdin eds, Chaucer’s Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales (Westport CT/London: Greenwood, 1996): 116-34, at 122. 3 Fisher, p 287.

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like. The other point is more intricate. If we accept the identification, we must also allow for a complex and ironic interplay of voices, effected in much the way that a ventriloquist plies his profession. Thus, there is a range of voices, whereby it is sometimes Chaucer speaking through the Sergeant/Man of Law, sometimes his Gower caricature and sometimes a bit of both. The notion of a pilgrim’s portrait drawn from actual life is a familiar one to Chaucer students. While most of his characters seem to be fictional, there are some notable exceptions. The Host is the most obvious instance but in other instances, too, there have been attempts, some of them convincing and others less so, to relate Chaucer’s descriptions to actual contemporaries.4 There is an apparent contradiction here with the concept of estates satire drawn from stock models. But some reflection learns us that real life is riddled with people possessing traits and mannerisms that do come close to the satirical, not to mention the consideration that in writing for a small coterie it must have been both tempting and rewarding to hold up familiar figures for a good laugh. In any case, it is a natural thing for an author to flesh out his fictional characterizations by drawing on ideosyncratic traits encountered in his contacts with actual people. In the Man of Law’s case Thomas Pynchbek has been put forward, who “served as a justice of assize between 1376 and 1388 and who was known for his acquisition of land, as well as for his learning; in 1388, as chief baron of the Exchequer, he signed a writ for Chaucer’s arrest in a case of debt”. This and a perceived pun on his name in the shape of “pynche” are the chief grounds for this identification.5 A good look at the portrait of the Sergeant of the Law makes us wonder about the felicity of this identification. The General Prologue is all about estates satire. If and when in using such satire Chaucer used real-life persons to base his descriptions on, we may assume that he took care to steer away from treading on the toes of the truly high and mighty. Herry Bailly of the Tabard would not have had any problem with his part, as this was great advertising and well-suited to attract curious customers. Much the same thing goes for the Shipman, 4

Benson, p 6. Benson, p 811. It is not impossible, of course, that Chaucer should have based his portrait on Gower yet thrown in some aspects of Pynchbek for good measure. In fact, his use of “pynche” may well be a play of words contrasting Gower’s activities with those of a true Sergeant of the Law.

5

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also identified as having been drawn from life, and his “Maudeleyne”. Yet it is a different matter entirely for a seasoned diplomat like Chaucer to have wittingly gone in for a satirical dressing-down of one of the twenty-one supreme legal authorities in the land, who ranked with the cream of the nobility.6 If this portrait were directed at Pynchbek and made before 1388, the writ against Chaucer which he signed in that year affirms how risky and ill-advised such satire would have been, at a time that was fraught with danger for all who remained on Richard’s side; if included after the writ had been served, it shows us a reckless and foolhardy Chaucer who was prepared to stick his neck out for the sake of an easy bit of satire. Neither option is consonant with the inferential picture that we have of him. The reverse notion of a boastful personality’s inflation into a Sergeant of the Law is both easier to understand and funnier. The entire portrait in the General Prologue can be read as scoring a wide range of easy hits on Gower’s person. Thus, the question is really whether the correspondences are just the lucky outcome of Chaucer having drawn a satirical portrait of someone high in the legal profession or the intentional inflation of Gower from a self-important lawyer into one of the legal masterminds of the realm. Book VII of the Confessio Amantis, in which Gower takes it upon himself to outline the education of a king, in imitation of Aristotle’s tutorship of Alexander the Great, carries the correct whiff of ego to fit this Sergeant. Fisher’s study on Gower extensively yet inconclusively discusses the tradition, as found in Leland and Speght, that Gower was legally trained and schooled at the Inns of Court.7 Unfortunately, the information that we possess from his own time is not too clear. But it is a documented fact that he was frequently involved in all sorts of litigation, both in judicial functions and as an interested party in some contested cases, such as the Septvauns matter, which would seem to have enabled him to make quite a kill in terms of acquisition of property.8 Then there is the Gower who served as Chaucer’s attorney when he was in Italy, which seems to indicate a legally trained person. His adherence to French as a vehicle of expression, as in Mirour de l’omme and Cinkante balades, links up nicely with someone whose 6

Benson, p 811. G.C. Macaulay, The Complete Works of John Gower (Oxford: Clarendon, 18991902), vol iv, pp viii-x. 8 Fisher, pp 51-54, 313-18. 7

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work was largely in the legal language of the time, which was French rather than the Latin that one might expect. Moreover, Gower’s work abounds in legalistic language and there is also his discussion of law in his Confessio, in particular natural law (kinde) in its relation to reason and human law, with special reference to how it ought to be applied by good rulers and an incorruptible Church.9 For reasons like this, modern critical opinion has swung away from Fisher and come to accept Gower as a legally trained person. “It is highly plausible that part of the younger Gower’s education would have taken place in the Inns of Court of London, and a famous reference in Mirour de l’homme, in which he declares that he wears a garment with striped sleeves, apparently as some form of recognisable professional garb, has reasonably been linked to the wearing of rayed garments in the law courts and taken as evidence that Gower pursued a legal career”.10 Clearly, this also makes the identification of the Sergeant as Gower a real option. The Septvauns Case The Septvauns case is instructive. If the raptus of Cecilia Chaumpaigne represents a puzzling and possibly dark page in the story of Chaucer’s life, as potentially damning are Gower’s manoeuvrings in the acquisition of the Sepvauns holdings. In 1364 the orphaned young William de Septvauns was confirmed in the possession of his father’s large estate upon proving his majority before the escheator in Kent. It appears that he was in desperate money trouble, which led him to borrow £1,060, a huge sum in terms of fourteenth-century money, £1,000 from one Sir Nicholas de Loveyne and £60 from John Gower, and, on their advice, to sell off his holdings. Among the purchasers there was Gower again, who acquired the property of Aldington Septvauns in exchange for 80 marks (£53.6s.8d), which roughly 9

Fisher, pp 154-56. Fisher regards the legalistic framework of Gower’s works as “legal commonplaces rather than the specific allusions one would expect of a trained lawyer”. I think that Fisher is wrong here and that there is every reason to accept commonplaces as quite natural for a ‘legal’ Gower to have used with respect to a lay public. For the subject of natural law, see Fisher, pp 135-203, passim; Baker: 152-57. Of course, Gower’s interest in natural law does not make him a lawyer. The fact is mentioned here purely because it does underscore his interest in the subject, as something not entirely unnatural for someone engaged in the legal profession. 10 Hines, pp 23-41, at p 25.

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coincides with the £60 loan. Evidently, William had not been entirely truthful about his age and Gower must have been aware of this. He took the unusual step of having his purchase tested “as to whether it would be to the prejudice of the king” and “had the writs and charters concerning his purchase recorded in Chancery”.11 This was wise, for before long the transaction was called into question, investigated and annulled because William was adjudged to have been under age at the time of the sale and to have caused the King loss of income by the premature release of his goods and lands. Thanks to his precautions, however, Gower’s claim proved strong enough to be upheld “by a special licence recorded on February 6, 1368”.12 There are several things worth noting. To begin with, what we are talking about here is a major property deal just a year or so after the second great outbreak of pestilence in 1361–62. With the first still firmly in memory, this was an ideal time for those with a bit of money at hand to obtain rich pickings. Good pieces of property were to be had at a pittance in all sort of instances – from depopulated holdings to estates run by straitened land-owners unable to meet their obligations. The Septvauns situation smacks of something like this and no doubt young William’s claim to be of age was inspired by the fear that if he did not inherit soon he would not inherit at all. Gower’s activities in this case were not unusual for him, as the evidence is that he was quite an active collector of property, largely in Kent, in these years.13 Then there is his circumspect dealing with the purchase. As Fisher admits, this happened “with more than the usual formality”, to which he adds that Gower “evidently […] knew that this was a sticky wicket”.14 Though Fisher does his best to exonerate Gower here, the case carries overtones of someone young and unexperienced being fleeced by slick city operators. It certainly shows that Gower was walking the razor’s edge of the legally permissible here, as Fisher admits. Immediately linked up with this is the implication of all this, namely that Gower must have been an astute businessman with a sharp eye for good pickings to be had and, what is more, well aware of the niceties of legal manoeuvring. It is this last detail that ought to interest us most at this point. 11

Fisher, pp 51-54. Fisher, pp 51-54. 13 Fisher, pp 37-69, passim. 14 Fisher, p 51. 12

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What the General Prologue Tells Us Together, all of the aspects that we have been discussing here combine into a portrait of someone who is definable as a man of law in various senses of the word, from judge to litigator, from litigator to property dealer well-initiated into the niceties of the law and from property dealer to philosopher dealing with a wide range of matters touching upon the subject of law. Now let us test this with respect to the Sergeant of the Law in the General Prologue and read his portrait with Gower in mind: A Sergeant of the Lawe, war and wys, That often hadde been at the Parvys, There was also, ful riche of excellence. Discreet he was and of greet reverence – He semed swich, his wordes weren so wise. Justice he was ful often in assise, By patente and by pleyn commissioun. For his science and for his heigh renoun, Of fees and robes hadde he many oon. So greet a purchasour was nowher noon: Al was fee symple to hym in effect ; His purchasyng myghte nat been infect. Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas, And yet he semed bisier than he was. In termes hadde he caas and doomes alle That from the tyme of kyng William were falle. Therto he koude endite and make a thyng, That koude no wight pynche at his writyng; And every statut koude he pleyn by rote. He rood but hoomly in a medlee cote, Girt with a ceint of silk, with barres smale; Of his array telle I no lenger tale. [GenProl, 309-30]

Short of the inflation of Gower the presumable lawyer into one of the great Sergeants, holding session at St Paul’s (the Parvys), there is not really anything here to argue against this identification. As Macaulay notes,15 Leland’s claim that Gower was brought up and practised as a lawyer is corroborated by a gloss in Leland’s manuscript (“Goverus seruiens ad legem 30 Ed. III”) and corresponds with documented fact in the shape of “the Year-book of 30 Ed. III [1356], where we 15

Macaulay, vol iv, p ix.

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find the name Gower, apparently as that of a serjeant-at-law who took part in the proceedings”. In fact, even the inflation may not be what it seems: this Gower appears in the Year Books for both 29 and 30 Ed. III, “usually as counsel, but on some occasions he speaks apparently as a judge”.16 Macaulay regards this Goverus as too young (twenty-six or so) to have been our Gower. He may be correct, but there is good reason to doubt this. Youth and ambition make a pretty potent brew and it is hard to see why a young and eager “legal Gower” could not have served in either function, particularly as Macaulay seems to be using serjeant-at-law in its older, loose sense. What also pleads in favour of this Goverus being our Gower is the historical context: we are once again talking about the aftermath years of the great Black Death calamity which caused huge disruption in all layers of the social fabric and, at the same time, created untold opportunities for those survivors who were capable and willing to take over the interesting posts and possessions that had fallen vacant. It is something that, ironically, is pointed out by Gower himself in the Vox clamantis (and also in the Mirour de l’omme), when with a straight face he complains about the rapaciousness of lawyers and the scramble for high office. As Macaulay condenses it in Liber Sextus, caput ii, of the Vox, the lawyer “contrives every device to enrich himself and his offspring; he joins house to house and field to field”,17 which is Septvauns all over again. A like complaint involves the ease with which a mere lawyer may become a sergeant of the law (sergantus, here used in its old sense) and go on to be a corrupt judge: Hic loquitur qualiter isti causidici et iuris aduocati, in sua gradatim ascendentes facultate, Iudicisque aspirantes officium, iudicalis solii tandem cacumen attingunt; vbi quasi in cathedra pestelencie sedentes, maioris auaricie cecitate percussi, peioris

Here we discuss how these attorneys and lawyers, climbing upwards step by step in their profession and aspiring to the office of judge, finally reach the top position of holding the judge’s seat; where, as if sitting in the seat of

16 Macaulay, vol iv, p ix note 2. These Year Books are basically the year’s registration of legal cases and lawsuits. Unfortunately, many have not come down to us, while others have survived only fragmentarily. Only 11 Edward to 20 Edward have been edited and translated (Luke Owen Pike and Alfred J. Horwood, eds, Year Books of the Reign of King Edward the Third (London: Mackie, 1883-1911; reissued 1964). Gower’s attendance is found in Tottil’s edition of Edward III’s Year Books (1585), which partially draws on sources now lost to us. 17 Macaulay, vol iv, p L (i.e. Roman numeral 50).

130 | The Sergeant and Man of Law as Gower quam antea condicionis existunt.

Est Apprenticius, Sergantus post et Adultus, Iudicis officium fine notabit eum. 18 Si cupit in primo, multo magis ipse secundo, Tercius atque gradus est super omne reus; Et sic lex gravibus auri moderatur habenis, Quod modo per iustas non valet ire vias. Libera qualis erat lex non est, immo ligatam Carcere nummorum ceca cupido tenet.

pestilence, they show themselves in a worse light than before, struck as they are by the blindness of a greater avarice. First he is an Apprentice, then a fullyfledged Sergeant; Finally the office of judge will mark him. If he is greedy in the first state, so much the more in the second, [While] the third is a step that is culpable [of greed] above all; And so the law is led by heavy reins on the ear [= can no longer hear clearly], So that it is no use to walk the paths of justice. Free and open as the law used to be, it is not so now; on the contrary, Blind greed for money holds it prisonlocked.19

A striking detail is that, like us, Gower links the pursuit of judicial power and financial gain to the Plague, even if this is expressed metaphorically.20 Also, his words indicate that offices were up for 18 The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, vol I, A-L (London: OUP, 1975) draws this specific reading directly from Gower’s “adultus”: “c. ripe, fully fledged, arrived at culmination of career”. This distinctly clashes with Gower’s own text, which makes it clear that the culmination does not lie here but in a third and final stage of being a corrupt judge. 19 Macaulay, vol iv, p 237. The translation is mine. 20 The cryptical “in cathedra pestilencie” is from Psalms 1:1-2: Beatus vir qui non abiit in consilio impiorum et in via peccatorum non stetit et in cathedra pestilentiae non sedit sed in lege domini voluntas eius et in lege eius meditabitur die ac nocte. The King James Bible comes up with the seat of the scornful. The reason why the Vulgate’s cathedra pestilentiae, seat of pestilence, differs so distinctly from this and its modern variants resides with the text of the Septuagint, which reads ’İʌȓ țĮșȑįȡĮȞ ȜȠȚȝȦȞ × : Henry Barclay Swete, The Old Testament in Greek, According to the Septuagint, vol II (Cambridge, CUP 1922), p 213. Greek ȜȠȚȝȩȢ means pest(ilence) or any great disease, and this is from where St Jerome derives his meaning, evidently reading its plural case as an intensifier. However, the plural is also applied to people (as in English ‘pests’) and this is how it ought to have been interpreted. Modern translations simply read scoffers, show up the Septuagint version as a rather free translation. All the same, the procession of homologous images – abiit/impiorum, stetit/peccatorum, and sedit/pestilentiae – has always ensured that the basic meaning of cathedra pestilentiae remained clear enough, as a metaphor for all the pestilent ones who do not follow the word and the law of God. The seat or, rather, gathering of scoffers, refers to those who who have no use for God (Robert G. Bratcher and William D. Reyburn eds, A Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Psalms. United Bible Societies, New York 1991, p 16). Doubtless much of this is what Gower is suggesting here. The judges that

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grabs: what he seems to say is that any youngster could be a Sergeant of the old kind as long as he was close to being of age. The word order in which Gower lets the apprentice first become a sergeant and then deals with his ripeness for the job (“adultus”) is a prime pointer. To return to Macaulay’s rejection of “Goverus” as a sergeant on account of his age, it is plain that Gower’s own words above on the situation of the legal world in the wake of the pestilences show him to be wrong. In fact, it looks as if not just Macaulay but also John Fisher and Alfred David are mistaken here. The latter two briefly go into the possibility that the Sergeant may be Gower but reject it for no clear reason.21 Yet the portrait in the General Prologue is fully compatible with what we know about Gower and, even if it comes some twentyfive years later, very much calls to mind the smooth operator of the Septvauns affair. It is readable throughout as a proper parody, exaggerating his weak points yet also showing us someone recognizable to his contemporaries as a politician and showman full of self-importance and pretence to wisdom, an active collector of goods and income, and a man vain of his knowledge of the law and his writing. Some of this we have already deduced from the above pages. Other aspects may need elucidation. Thus it is perhaps a good idea to note that, reading between the lines of Fisher’s study, we meet Gower as a man actively currying favour with the truly great. His writings show him as pursuing this object with attention to Richard II and, even more so, Henry of Lancaster. Such a man would have had no objection to being promoted, by way of repayment for his services, to the desired position of Sergeant of the Law. At this point it may be a good idea to make clear my own ideas on Gower. Of course the entire tenor of this study is to show that Chaucer fought him in a literary duel, but I have no particular axe with him to grind and the same thing may well have held good for Chaucer himself. The latter certainly defuses matters by sketching more or less he describes are godless creatures and a plague visited on the people. Moreover, the text that he refers to deals with the law as God’s law (lege domini) and refers not just to the true dispensing of justice but hints at divine justice to come. Another part of his point is found in his description of the judges as people who, already in a terrible state, are struck by new afflictions such as spiritual blindness. This is where pestilentia in its literal and familiar fourteenth-century sense comes in, including its widespread interpretation as a divinely ordained punishment of human sinfulness. 21 Alfred David, The Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in Chaucer’s Poetry (Bloomington, U of Indiana P, 1977), p 125.

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the same picture of himself: in his pilgrim persona he is a naive observer, a silly rhymer (Sir Thopas) and narrator of a most sententious tale, which, in demonstration perhaps of how closely he related his own role to Gower’s, he had originally apportioned to the Sergeant. If I am right and the latter is Gower and thus depicted in the General Prologue and the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale as a bit of a bombastic person, with a philosophical cast of mind but also an eye for good pickings, this is consonant with the impression that one gets from reading his various works: a contradictory man, not truly likable in every respect, yet also someone very much like Chaucer himself. This seems to me a fair sketch. If it sounds negative, it nonetheless does not detract from his qualities as an author. His writings, while frequently sounding a reactionary note, are sympathetic in their concern for the well-being of England and his Confessio Amantis is clearly one of the great landmarks in medieval English literature. There is no actual need to go through the Sergeant’s portrait word by word, but the majority of lines are simply too good to pass up. He was ...ful riche of excellence. Discreet he was and of greet reverence – He semed swich, his wordes were so wise.

The qualification added to his highly excellent, discreet [judicious, prudent or morally discerning] and distinguished state is that he seemed such, because his words were so wise. It is pretence and pretentiousness that we are dealing with here. One is irresistibly reminded of the didactic and moralizing passages in his Vox clamantis and The Education of a King in Book VII of the Confessio. It also calls to mind Chaucer’s criticism of Canacee and Apollonius of Tyre, as two not-so-wise tales in a seemingly wise list of tales. If we are right in reading the Sergeant as Gower, what are we to think of the innuendo in the lines on his participation in judicial sessions? He is fully qualified to sit on all sort of cases and is a welcome member of the bench, and the job is clearly not without its perks. In fact, if we follow Robinson here, who has a colon after “commissioun”, there is even a hint of bribability: Justice he was ful often in assise, By patente and by pleyn commissioun:

The Sergeant and Man of Law as Gower | 133 For his science and for his heigh renoun, Of fees and robes hadde he many oon.

Yet we ought not to forget that, if this is Gower, we are dealing with parody and what we read as insinuation here may just as well be a sly reversal of the actual state of affairs, Gower being notoriously vocal in his books on the subject of the proper application of the law and himself being therefore arguably a stickler for absolutely impartial jurisprudence. Gower’s acquisition of land in Kent comes into ken again in the lines that follow. Of course, the rapaciousness of lawyers was a stock complaint in his time, yet unless we are much mistaken, Chaucer’s lines read as a plain hint at Gower’s own property transactions. In fact, the line about the impossibility of invalidating his purchasing looks like a direct jab at the old Septvauns matter. This is so clear that, even though he rejects the notion of the Sergeant being Gower, John Fisher feels compelled to link them directly together here. “In his real estate transactions, Gower was engaging in what he himself criticized as one of the principal vices of the legal profession. We may recall Chaucer’s Man of Law in connection with Gower’s canny handling of the Septvauns affair”.22 He then quotes: So great a purchasour was nowher noon: All was fee symple to hym in effect; [unrestricted possession] His purchasyng myghte nat been infect. [invalidated]

It seems to me that the easy and obvious associability of this passage with Gower’s record as a property collector may be taken as a signal on Chaucer’s part as to how he wished his public to read it. Next, the Sergeant is described as a bit of a poseur: Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas, And yet he semed bisier than he was.

The thing to be noted is the recurrence of the telltale “semed”, which goes to underline that Chaucer is making a point here about the Sergeant’s posturing but whose reason is hard to understand unless we take it to apply to a real-life person. Once again, John Gower, as he 22

Fisher, p 56.

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speaks to us from his works and his political activities, is a prime candidate to have been the self-important fusser that is described here. The lines that follow sketch the Sergeant as a great one for showing off his knowledge of the law from the Conqueror onward: In termes hadde he caas and doomes alle That from the tyme of kyng William were falle.

We must probably read in termes as a variant of in terme, meaning with formal accuracy.23 Thus, the text suggests someone with a penchant for citing old legal texts (“he could reel off all the cases and decisions”),24 which was presumably somewhat of a joke. French being the legal medium, this person must probably be thought of as going about pronouncing ponderous texts in antiquated French. If the joke was at Gower’s expense, there is an interesting link to be laid with his evident preference for this language. French would have been something that a legal Gower was well conversant with. Also, it still carried a chic and courtly ring throughout the latter half of the century, even if – to judge by Chaucer’s voice and his own Confessio Amantis – it was rapidly being replaced by English. Thus, by way of illustration, Gower accents his name throughout the Confessio with the accent on the second syllable, no doubt in order to achieve a certain francophone ambiance.25 Both of these aspects come together in his writings, such as Mirour de l’omme and the Cinkante balades. In fact, Gower’s adherence to his beloved French appears to have gone beyond the grave. When one visits his tomb in Southwark Cathedral, one of the striking things is that the three Virtues depicted in the background of his monument – Charity, Mercy and Pity – display scrolls whose texts are not in the usual Latin but French instead. In this connection, there is a final interesting little matter of language that points to Gower. This is the Man of Law’s French oath of depardieux – a matter of swearing and yet not swearing. A common formula in French legal language, the point of its inclusion as a semioath could well lie in its applicability to Gower, as the very person 23 Robinson, pp 982-83. Benson, p 1297, interprets this specific instance of termes to mean Year Books, thus suggesting the Sergeant’s possession of huge legal library. 24 Anonymous ed., Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (1969; reissued as a Penguin Popular Classic, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), p 16. 25 Tiller, p 282 note.

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whom we might expect to swear so daintily in French, particularly if he was the lawyer that I think he was.26 The word could well have been deliberately inserted here for Chaucer’s audience. The next lines on the Sergeant also carry suggestive overtones: Therto he koude endite and make a thyng, That koude no wight pynche at his writyng.

Benson reads this along judicial lines, which is a legitimate approach, but there is also something to be said in favour of regarding them as deliberate ambiguity, enabling Chaucer to take a swipe at Gower the poet, particularly since the description of the Sergeant appears to alternate from his professional activities to his private interests and back again, for evident ironical reasons. Our primary association with “endite” is with the Squire in the General Prologue, the Second Nun’s Prologue and the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women [F-Prol, 414; G-Prol, 402], where each time it means something like “composing poetry”. This makes it a tempting thought that Chaucer may be jabbing at Gower here, describing his Confessio or one of the other works as just a clever and pinchproof “thyng”. The passage ends on a note whereby the Sergeant is described as unpretentiously dressed. This is irony again, for behind the apparent modesty of his “medlee cote […] with barres smale” we discern his official “power suit [as] an advertisement for his exalted place in his profession”, which immediately makes the silk (and hence costly) belt that he wears easier to comprehend.27 It also calls to mind Gower’s self-portrait in Mirour de l’omme, which describes his outfit as suggesting a legal or civil office and comes up with similar stripes: Je ne suy pas clers, Vestu de sanguin ne de pers, Ainz ai vestu la raye mance Poy sai latin, poy sai romance.

26

I am not a clerk clothed in red or in purple, but wear a garment with striped sleeves. I know a bit of Latin, I know a bit of French. [Mirour, 21772]28

Benson, p 855 note 39. Hornsby, Lambdin & Lambdin: 123. 28 Fisher, pp 55-56. Fisher makes a good case for rayed garments as “a civil livery of some sort” that was particularly associated with the law. This is confirmed by Laura F. Hodges, Chaucer and Costume: The Secular Pilgrims in the General Prologue (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000), pp 101-25, at 112-19. The translation here is Fisher’s, 27

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Like the lines that describe him as someone eager to cite the law at all times, the General Prologue’s description here very much suggests a personalized and contemporary portrait, not so much intended for eternity as for a good laugh by Chaucer’s own public. This seems to me precisely why he ends his description with the words “Of his array telle I no lenger tale”: at this point his message ought to have been well-understood. Having found the Sergeant’s portrait to be consonant with the notion that it is a likely parody of Gower himself (proof, of course, being a different matter), let me emphasize once again the parodial aspect. I am not saying that Gower was all that the Sergeant’s portrait comes up with. Satire being satire, the real Gower must have been less extreme than he is made out to be, yet at the same time the picture ought to have been sufficiently recognizable for Chaucer’s public. What we must next decide whether the Sergeant’s portrait is the original one or a rewrite. With Chaucer’s occasional use of real-life persons as the basis for his portraits, the question really comes down to whether the Sergeant was always founded on Gower or rewritten to resemble Gower, in which case the preservation of his title is best taken as a piece of editorial laziness. If I am right, the Sergeant provides a portrait in which Gower is inflated into someone truly important, reflecting perhaps his aspirations to the office at which all of his political efforts were directed. His demotion to Man of Law, on the other hand, is a matter of deflation, as a direct result of his literary quarrel with Chaucer which calls for a decimation of the opponent. Evidently, these are contrary impulses and difficult to reconcile as part of the same writing effort. As the Sergeant’s portrait in the General Prologue is all about self-interest and self-importance, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that we are dealing here with a somewhat different conception than the deflatory one that we encounter with the Man of Law. It is therefore likely to be part and parcel of one and the same original effort and not a rewritten version. Yet when we come to weigh matters, is this not a bit too felicitous to be true? After all, such a conclusion implies that Gower was a target from the very first, which except for the last line, which is an obvious bit of ironical self-deprecation. Fisher’s reading of this as “I know little Latin or French” is hardly consistent with Gower’s undeniable grasp of both languages and has been replaced here by a more appropriate (as well as literal) translation.

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seems to carry the rather unlikely implication that Chaucer had been anticipating Gower’s challenge. This is probably the wrong way of looking at the evidence. What we have already noticed is Chaucer’s occasional liking for drawing his characters from real life. Thus, there is an excellent chance that in his early search for a suitable figure to fill the judicial slot in his estates satire he lit upon the ambitious Gower. Surely there must have been some eyebrows raised at Gower’s upward drive and the means that he employed, so that the sketch which we have here may be assumed to have been good for a few chuckles. Later, when Gower’s challenge came up, the Sergeant was the natural choice on whom to found his reaction. This leads us to the exciting possibility that the entire literary duel between Chaucer and Gower was sparked off not so much by the latter’s challenge as by the provocative portrayal which was meted out to him in the General Prologue. Gower’s challenge at the end of the Confessio does come out of the blue, striking at Chaucer for no apparent reason. Here, however, we have an excellent indication that Chaucer had given him good cause to do so. It is a natural starting point. Basically, Chaucer paints a deprecatory picture of Gower and, assuming with Fisher that these two were sometime friends, it is one that appears to express a measure of reproof. As I have pointed out before, the issue seems to be all about morality. At the end of his Troilus (probably finished between 1382-85) Gower is still a worthy person, moral Gower, and mentioned in almost one and the same breath with Strode and Christ, so that we can hardly suppose the accolade to have been a cynical one. Just a few years later his General Prologue comes up with what may well have been a satirical portrait, which several years later is amended to a near-explicit though probably tongue-incheek statement in the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale that Gower is an immoral writer. Essentially, this reduces us to a chicken-or-the-egg debate, for the natural question to be posed here is of course why Chaucer should have changed his mind on Gower so dramatically. From our great distance it is virtually impossible to come up with anything even remotely qualifying as reliable evidence. This leaves guesswork only. One option, which is the one that I prefer, is to take everything as game and play, as part of an on-going literary skirmish between the two. There is much to be said for this. Alternatively, it is also quite possible to put a dark gloss on the things that we have learnt so far. What if

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some not so very moral property deals, to which he appears to refer in the General Prologue and which may also have been why the Prologue to the Man of Law’s Tale was preserved, had come to his ears at this time and rather shocked him? We are, after all, talking here about unscrupulous buyers of lands and goods that were to be had at a pittance from destitute survivors in the wake of the great outbursts of the plague. In this connection, it is worth noting that Chaucer served as Justice of the Peace in Kent in 1385 and 1386, signal years – or so one assumes – with respect to the writing of the General Prologue29. Both “time and place did then adhere” for him to have become better acquainted with our legal Gower. With Kent as Gower’s favourite haunt, what if, in this new function, Chaucer had learnt about his acquisitions and courtroom practices or observed them at first hand or even run foul of him, and used this knowledge for a good jest in the newly-begun Canterbury Tales? The Gower just described would have been a natural target for Chaucer’s arrows, and even more so if the situation meant that Chaucer should have felt undeceived. Of course, our access to Chaucer is largely through his public face, as expressed in his writings, which gives us a considerably straightlaced person. We find this confirmed by his accolade to moral Gower and philosophical Strode, which implies a self-image whereby his own moral nature and philosophical bent constitute their common bond. What tends to confound us is that Chaucer’s judgemental stance is continually leavened by an excellent sense of humour. This reveals a man well capable of putting things in their perspective, implying a flexible mind as well as leaving room for assuming that in his own way he may have been a bit of a rogue. Another and different consideration is that part of the answer may lie in Gower’s increasing leaning towards Henry of Lancaster’s cause, while, as Gaunt’s man as well as Richard’s, Chaucer remained firmly bound to the powers that were.30 What argues against this is Chaucer’s general evasiveness on the political matters of the century’s 29

A.C. Cawley, ed. Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (1908; London: Dent, 1966), p vii; Benson, p xix. 30 To be frank, there is a third reading that also deserves to be mentioned. This is the possibility that Gower’s challenge first resulted in the Sergeant of the Law’s portrait as Chaucer’s reaction and that his subsequent demotion to Man of Law reflects Chaucer’s countermove to being eliminated from the Confessio. However, this does not sound very probable and runs into all sort of trouble with the part that the Legend of Good Women plays in all of this.

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close and his seeming acceptance of Henry’s takeover in his Complaint unto His Purse. With aspects of Chaucer’s Sergeant of the Law still readable as a potential caricature of Gower after more than six centuries, it becomes easy to accept that it was probably no difficult matter for those about court to recognize the Sergeant’s true colours. Less easy is the question whether in due course the portrait in the General Prologue was meant to undergo some adaptation with respect to his status. This seems indicated by the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, which gives us someone cut down to size but still recognizably the same pompous personality that we encounter in the General Prologue. Reduced to being just a lawyer, he is hoist here by his own petard, hanged by his own weak points. His portrait still exhibits some of the characteristic aspects that we find in the General Prologue, even if he is now just one of the rank-and-file Canterbury pilgrims. He remains self-important and not a little bit vain about his status or his wide reading. As Alfred David defines him, he is the “type of wealthy bourgeois who condescends to dictate his taste to the artist”.31 However, his lot here is worse than before. He has now been made Chaucer’s puppet and is reduced to pronouncing judgement upon himself – both in the literary critique that he is made to pass on his own Confessio and in the sententiousness of the tale which he is given to tell. The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that the Sergeant’s demotion is much more effective and incisive as it is now than a rewriting – even if only in the shape of a renaming – could ever have hoped to be. The Malapropisms of the Man of Law Though this is speculation again, the instances of a patronizing yet self-depreciating Man of Law who garbles bits of his text and misrepresents both Chaucer and Gower may also be explained from the same perspective. While most of the Man of Law’s slip-ups are clearly a matter of huffing and puffing as part of Chaucer’s reply to Gower’s challenge, they evidently also serve to draw a portrait of the man. But what exactly do they contribute? The situation becomes more transparent , once we allow that they were all directed at Gower as a person who was given to boasting and occasional slips of learning, possibly 31

David, pp 221-22. I am indebted to Delasanta for pointing out the remark.

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not averse to claiming to have anticipated in writing all sort of tales by contemporary authors.32 This accords well with the portrait of the Sergeant who seemed discreet and respectable and whose “wordes were so wise”. Thus everything comes to look like a firm joke at Gower’s expense, whereby his deflation of Chaucer’s versification in the Confessio Amantis is turned against him by a mouthpiece who is based upon himself. There is a good case to be made of the slips that the Man of Law makes in his Introduction, which tend to show him up as a bit of a pompous man. Rodney Delasanta notes here that “Chaucer is not the Man of Law” and that “he is quite obviously not fond of the Man of Law”,33 a remark that is meaningless unless we substitute him by a real person, such as Gower. To underline his interpretation, he comes up with a good set of little errors in the Introduction which are all to the point, though of course the Man of Law’s true faux pas is his mixup of his own and Chaucer’s work. Delasanta’s remarks about Chaucer’s dislike of the Man of Law fit in well, especially when we put ourselves the question where it should have come from. In fact, it seems a natural step for us to assume that the funny fashion in which the Man of Law garbles his own and Chaucer’s writings has some bearing on the man himself. On the one hand, we seem to be dealing with a multi-level joke at Gower’s expense, in which he functions as a somewhat maliciously manipulated puppet, and on the other to be receiving echoes of a Gower with a capacity for mangling his texts and obscuring their message.34 Alternatively, this may be Chaucer poking fun at Gower’s penchant for displaying his erudition. A wicked bit of irony is involved in his discussion of Canacee and Apollonius of Tyre, in which Chaucer makes him throw out the old accolade of “moral Gower”. Chaucer is the one to have been so moral as not to touch such tainted tales, whereas it is Gower who, by implication, is made out to have stooped to some writing in execrable 32

The reference, of course, is to the intricate mix-up of the Confessio and the Legend that is perpetrated by the Man of Law, as an elaborate joke on Chaucer’s part that leaves us guessing at its exact contours but must have been obvious to his contemporary public. Of course, here the “pilgrim Gower” persona is made to mess up things by attributing his own works to Chaucer, but this may well be an ironic reversal of Gower’s acte de présence. 33 Delasanta, ‘Great Reverence’: 290. 34 Something similar has been argued by Sullivan and Wood, see Benson, p 854, though without any notion that the Man of Law could be Gower.

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taste. There is a bit of a joke involved here, as it is plainly Gower’s public image of moral outspokenness that he is made to apply here to his own writings, with the unspoken message that one should practise what one preaches, which is where the word “sermons” in line 87 of the Introduction may well come in. What also ought to strike us with some force is the Man of Law’s apparent inside knowledge of Chaucer’s literary progress. His reference to the Seintes Legende of Cupide, our Legend of Good Women, is basically an impossible one. We tend to forget that the work was in medias res at the time of the challenge and presumably unavailable to any public, with the possible exception of some reading sessions and, though unlikely, a very restricted circulation among intimate friends. How, then, could this boastful noncognoscento be in possession of all this information? Of course his list of good women may represent Chaucer’s projected work on the Legend and as such anticipate its completion, which is Benson’s view, but the puzzle is just as well resolved by reading the Man of Law to be Gower, as – at this point and possibly always – a Chaucer intimate. As I have noted before, our deductions about Gower may have been common knowledge to Chaucer’s public and a point of common amusement as well. If anything, they indicate a route toward understanding the Man of Law’s list of tales that is not equalled by other interpretations, while at the same time accounting for the paradox of Gower – even if only as a literary persona and in disguise, at that – attributing his own writings to Chaucer. It is clearly ridiculous to suppose him to have mistaken his own Confessio for the Legend of Good Women. This is where we should remember that it is always dangerous to read Chaucer’s writings on just one level. The present place is no exception. The crucial aspect of what the Man of Law is doing – and this seems to affirm that he must be Gower – lies in his faulty listing of the tales that Chaucer tells in the Legend of Good Women. Apart from showing him up as being given to garbling things, the text also allows us to interpret the Man of Law as a Gower persona living under the illusion that Chaucer had rushed off to remake the Legend into a mirror image of the Confessio, being convinced that the latter had no other choice than execute his suggestions. This may be why he is made to say – or made to mean to do so – that young Chaucer wrote about Ceyx and Alcyone but, for the rest, one should turn to his excellent imitations in his new edition of the Seintes Legende of Cupide. With remarkable restraint (though hardly

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so on Chaucer’s part) he avoids mentioning his name and his major work but, in order to provide a good hint, twice defers to his major classical source, Ovid’s Heroides. In doing so, Chaucer neatly makes him reflect the self-congratulatory nature of his challenge. The list that he provides may even echo actual suggestions, made in person by Gower, on the shape of the Legend as the Testament of Love to be. If so, it confirms those scholars who see the Man of Law’s list as a prospectus for the Legend-to-be. They may well be right, the difference being that it constitutes a list of Gower’s preferences and expectations and in no way reflects what Chaucer came up with as his answer. Even the scathing remarks on the tales of Canacee and Apollonius of Tyre fall within this picture. We hear, loud and clear, what appear to be Chaucer’s own feelings on the two. No such immorality for him, he makes the Man of Law say, and it is plain that this must to some extent represent his own feelings. Yet the excessive colouring (cursed, wikked, unkynde abhomynacions) is unlike Chaucer. Gower, on the other hand, is always quite vocal in his major works on the subject of immorality but comes across as lenient on the subject of incest.35 It is therefore both a credible and attractive notion that in this place the Man of Law is made to dance to Chaucer’s tune and pronounce judgement upon himself along characteristically Gowerian lines. Needless to say, this, too, accords very well with the notion that what looks like a serious clash of rival poets may in actual fact have been a literary Punch-and-Judy show directed at entertaining the court at great and perhaps unusual length. A good illustration of the multiple levels on which Chaucer is engaged here, including the Man of Law’s penchant for showing off his erudition yet muddling everything, is the Pierides passage. Near the conclusion of the Introduction, the Lawman remarks that he …were looth be likned, doutelees, To Muses that men clepe Pierides – Metamorphosios woot what I mene. [IntroMLT, 91-93]

The text is somewhat obscure, but it is obvious that the Man of Law is attempting to show off his wide reading. What he wishes to in35

The Mirour de l’omme and the Vox clamantis both contain long tracts on contemporary abuses, some of which (like those dealing with matters of the law) seem to be perfectly applicable to Gower himself (Macaulay, vol i, pp 267-74; vol iv, pp 230-45).

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dicate is that he does not want to be a cheap imitator. In his pompous way, he turns to Ovid’s story of “the daughters of King Pierus, who unsuccessfully challenged the Muses to a singing contest and were changed into magpies”36, his point evidently being the magpie’s proverbial thievishness. If he had simply stuck to referring to the Pierides, things would have been all right. The ides-ending represents a patronym in classical Greek and thus refers to Pierus. So far, so good. Where he bungles things is by attempting a play of words on the Muses, whose birthplace is Pieria, which makes them Pierides of sorts. The result is disastrous, because the way he puts things turns the daughters of Pierus into the Muses whom they failed to outdo or the Muses into daughters of Pierus, whichever one prefers. Of course, what the Man of Law means to say is that he is not going to try and compete with a past master like – yes, like whom? Like Chaucer, to whom the outward reference is, or like Gower, who is the implicit author referred to and, as an Ovid imitator, is hinted at by the reference to the Metamorphoses? Plainly, with Chaucer as the puppet master here, his poor Gower marionette is attempting to insinuate an inordinate amount of borrowing from Ovid on Chaucer’s part and suggesting wholesale literary theft as the latter’s muse. Instead, the only thing that he manages to effect is the suggestion that he, Gower himself, is the magpie in question. Robinson and Benson attribute the genitive Metamorphosios, which is used here instead of Metamorphoses in accordance with medieval and even post-medieval practice to retain the appropriate case for classical words even though applied to a different language (modern German is a case in point: “Ich will Jesum selbst begraben”), to an elided liber and cite some authorities for this.37 The Man of Law does not wish to be likened to the Pierides of the Metamorphoses, though strictly speaking this is not what he says, because here he makes another of his little telltale mistakes. In this attempt to show off his classical literacy, he should have used the genitive plural, which – as a Greek borrowing – is metamorphoseoon. Instead, he now speaks of the Pierides “of the metamorphosis”. Fortunately, the error is a minor one and, with a bit of good will on the readers’ part, capable of

36

Benson, p 856 note 91-92. Robinson, p 691, Benson, p 855. The genitive sing. properly ends in -eos rather than –ios. 37

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being read as referring to the Pierides’ case as one of the many transformations in Ovid’s book.38 “Metamorphosios woot what I mene” is entertainingly ambiguous. It carries a whiff of the Man of Law’s superior attitude, nicely illustrated by his use of such a classical name, while it also includes the same sly wink at the reader as does our modern “[if you] know what I mean” and as such is easily read as a hint on Chaucer’s part that reading the Man of Law’s magpie remark as a self-indictment is correct. It can certainly be read as a pointer to the metamorphosis that he has made Gower undergo. As promised, here are levels within levels. As the Man of Law, the speaker indicates that he wishes to imitate neither Ovid nor Chaucer. By picking the tale of Custance (or the Melibee) he adds force to his words. As Gower presenting his prospectus for the Legend he attempts to give us Chaucer as inspired by the wrong sort of Pierides – a magpie. This prick against Chaucer falls short of its target and, as Gower the garbler of texts, he metes out to himself the judgement that he seeks to pass on Chaucer. Who else but he is the great magpie making off with Ovid’s tales? In recognition of what we shall find later on the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner, let us note this as a very exegetical type of writing, involving several layers of meaning and closely related to the way in which sermons (line 87!) were composed. Within this perspective Fisher’s suggestion of the Man of Law’s Tale as a study in sanctimoniousness acquires a new meaning. The Man of Law is not so much Chaucer’s mouthpiece – he is Chaucer’s Gower-puppet who is used here to poke fun at Gower’s own sentiments and weak points by inflating and deflating them at the appropriate moments, with all sorts of telling detail added in order to make his public share the joke, and all this emphasized by a tale so familiar that, as Elizabeth Archibald notes, it would have been effortlessly associated with incest by his audience.39 And with Gower’s recent book, we should add. One is irresistibly reminded of David’s comment40 that “the joke is really on the Man of Law, who only makes himself seem ridiculously prudish in professing to be more moral than moral 38 Against this, see Robinson p 691 and Benson p 855, who claim that the genitive sing. was a common form for referring to the Metamorphoses. 39 Elizabeth Archibald, ‘The Flight from Incest: Two Late Precursors of the Constance Theme’, ChauR 20 (1986): 259-72. 40 David, p 125.

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Gower”. How appropriate does not this become if he should be a caricature version of Gower himself? Everything that he says contributes to a picture of Gower being Chaucer’s butt here. There is a final point on this issue to be discussed here. If the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale was a new addition or a rewriting of an earlier Introduction and the original Sergeant of the Law’s tale shifted and replaced by the Prologue and the tale of Custance, with their rewriting still to come, why is it that Chaucer’s attention should have been drawn to precisely this place in the Canterbury Tales? We know at least one possible answer to this question. This is our earlier option that Chaucer’s selection of the then Sergeant of the Law’s Introduction and Tale was made because it was the natural launching platform for a strike against Gower. With the Sergeant as a parody of Gower, he would naturally have come to mind as the perfect medium to deal with the challenge. This resulted in the Introduction being rewritten to include his reply to the challenge and to demote Gower by way of “quytynge”, to a mere Man of Law. Having got so far, Chaucer had a change of heart soon after. What with the Man of Law as a Gower substitute and the foolish hash that he makes of Chaucer’s writings and his own, the one thing that is missing is a tale that also spells Gower. After all, there was a public here who deserved a good chance to see clearly what he was driving at. Being well aware who was targeted here, they would have been disappointed if Chaucer had foregone further undercuttings of Gower. As we have seen, the Melibee was appropriate enough for this, particularly as its Fürstenspiegel type of narration easily brings to mind Book VII of the Confessio. For some reason, possibly political, it was reassigned to Chaucer himself as the more suitable narrator and replaced by the more distinctly Gowerian Custance. It is clear that much of what we have found on the ChaucerGower situation here seems to reflect a clashing, if not of personalities then at least of writing wits. It supports the old and insistent tradition that Chaucer and Gower were somehow engaged in a quarrel, even if the exact nature of the quarrel remains unspecified. When Carolyn Dinshaw claims, in 1991, that the “old, lingering, if discredited, notion of [a] ‘quarrel’ between Chaucer and Gower” has now largely been laid to rest or should at least be in a state close to this, this study’s

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findings rather bring down any such complacency.41 All the evidence, here and in chapters to come, indicates a considerable bit of friction. Thus, if anything, the old spectre is still active, even if there was not so much a falling-out as, more likely, a battle of writing wits which required them to be engaged in a mock duel, or perhaps a bit of both. Earlier I stated my reasons for accepting a court game. Here in this chapter, we have come across further support. Considering how well everything allows itself to be read as a literary duel that both poets were engaged in for the sake of the court coterie that they were writing for – how, in fact, it is these people chiefly who would have been truly able to appreciate all that our two poets were doing to each other – we had perhaps best accept Chaucer’s portrayal of the Sergeant of the Law as the casus belli that led Gower to come up with a sharp but dignified response. The court’s awareness of this, and perhaps even its active stimulation, is what could have led to a vogue of sorts in the course of which its members were entertained by Chaucer’s engagement in literary combat with the other major poet of the day. One need only imagine Gower grumbling about the way in which Chaucer had dealt with him and “sympathetic” courtiers proposing that he do something about it, to see how easily such a bit of court sport could have been set into motion. Or perhaps the royals, whom John Fisher sees as the commissioners of Chaucer’s and Gower’s rival works, were in a mischievous mood during that particular boating day on the Thames.

41

Carolyn Dinshaw, ‘Rivalry, Rape and Manhood: Gower and Chaucer’ in Yeager: 130-52, at 130-32.

4. The Testament of Love The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale as a Testament of Love On the issue of the resoundingness of Chaucer’s answer to the challenge, this study has been well anticipated by John Fisher: “While the choice and shaping of the [Man of Law’s Tale] itself may have been indebted to Gower, there was probably more than a glint of humor in his decision to outdo his old friend at his sanctimonious best. ‘If we’re going to be proper, leeve brother, let’s be really proper.’ The glint must have grown to a grin when he conceived the notion of expanding the Wife of Bath’s prologue and assigning to her yet another tale 1 from the Confessio”.

A little later he adds: Let us suppose that out of deference to Gower’s opinions, Chaucer had laid aside the Cook’s Tale and written the Man of Law’s headlink and tale, superbly retelling one of Gower’s stories. With Gower still on his mind, and seeking for a way to get back to something saltier than the tale of Constance, he decided to recast the Wife of Bath as a shrewish wife, making use of Jankyn’s book of wicked wives.[….]. Either to tease Gower (by this time using one of his tales in so questionable a context), or simply because he found the story an extremely appropriate vehicle for the amalgamation of the satiric and the romantic, Chaucer decided to assign to the Wife of Bath the tale of the Loathly Lady.2

Fisher makes it all sound very simple and natural, but in actual fact the transition from the Man of Law seems to have been carefully prepared. We deduce this not only from Chaucer’s choice for the Man of Law of a tale starkly emphasizing virtue3 as well as Custance’s sanctified womanhood, which provides an evident black-and-white contrast with the Wife of Bath. Also there is the Tale’s debt to De miseria and its twin sentiment of “joye after wo” and “wo after glad1

Fisher, p 292. Fisher, pp 295-96. 3 Fisher, pp 290-91; Lewis: 488-92. 2

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nesse.”4 These two are recurrent aspects throughout the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. We hear them echoed in the “wo that is in mariage” and in her various dealings with her old and niggardly husbands. Her marriage to Jankyn surely fits the notion of joy after woe, to be turned upside down by his recalcitrant conduct and once more reversed after their great quarrel. Similarly, the bachelor knight of the Wife’s tale experiences woe after his moment of rapist delight and is ultimately rewarded with the most supreme form of joy – bliss – after his testing moments of misery. The problem with Fisher’s insight is that it is not so much a deduction as an intuition. This is a pity, as there is no doubt in my mind that the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale are Chaucer’s superior brainchild here and were specifically composed as an answer to Gower. Textually but also in other respects, such as the fact that they head the Marriage Group, and perhaps most of all for the patent vigour of their telling, there can be little doubt that they represent an inspired new approach to the Canterbury Tales. Taken as a whole, they constitute a sublime piece of writing, not only from a literary point of view but from several other ones, and demonstrate a truly remarkable measure of indebtedness to Gower. In fact, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale fit the notion of a Testament of Love by Chaucer as a masterful repartee so well that no other tales are at all necessary – with the exception perhaps of the Parson’s Tale as their referential key and the Man of Law’s Tale as their virtuous complement. They are the perfect answer to the challenge, a sparkling miniature Confessio Amantis intended to outdo Gower at every turn. What should concern us here briefly is another point. Assuming that the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and its associated tales put paid to Gower with a vengeance, what about the new plan? Why a new plan at all, now that Gower has had his answer? The basic answer is simple. Set into motion by Gower’s challenge, the new plan is the direct outcome of Chaucer’s affixation of the Parson’s Tale to coincide with the pilgrims’ arrival at Canterbury, its practical consequence of all second, third and fourth tales being scrapped, and its further consequence of tales being set to a spiritual application. Another way 4

Lewis: 488-92. The sentiment itself is not new. It is also found in the Knight’s Tale, where it is stated in exactly these words [line 2841]. Rather than assume that De miseria was already known to him at the time of its composition, I would guess the phrase (and similar references) to be later interpolations.

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of looking at this is to recognize that Chaucer threw out his original gridlike narrative concept in favour of Gower’s linear approach and affirmed this by putting the Parson’s Tale at the end of a one-way pilgrimage. Looking at matters closely, as we did when we discussed the terms of Gower’s challenge, we see that Chaucer’s switch to the new plan with its Confessio-like scheme of a virtue-vice discussion marked by an intermittent debate on marriage is roughly synonymous with my broad definiton of a Testament of Love. This clearly is the Testament of Love that he was seeking to create once the court duel was over. In contrast to this, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and the other two tales that are directly involved (three, if we include the Parson) constitute a capsule version of such a Testament that is ruled by a much stricter interpretation of the task set by Gower. Thus it is also possible that, once Gower had been directly dealt with in the shape of this brief Testament of Love, whether advertised or not but presumably presented in one or more reading sessions, Chaucer returned to the every-day business of composing a Canterbury Tales and in the process sought to remove its traces as something that had only temporarily stood out from the rest. This part of things had merely been a passing matter of game and play, after all. It may not have been his wish to turn everything into an elaborate and monumental tribute to Gower, but it is difficult to deny that the outcome of all the changes that Chaucer effected after the 1390 challenge is a work that is more Gower-oriented and Gower-indebted throughout. Once again we find ourselves in the company of Fisher who attributes to Gower’s influence Chaucer’s creation of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and the tales generally associated with her and known as the Marriage Group. What is more, “From gentilesse and sovereignty in the Confessio and Mirour,” he says, “to the marriage group in the Canterbury Tales – this is Chaucer’s final and most stunning transformation of Gower’s themes and moralizations. This became the ‘testament of love’ Gower begged him to get on with in 1390”.5 Though it is difficult to see the begging element in Gower’s challenge, this group of tales, as proposed by Kittredge and reaffirmed here by Fisher, fits in well with my idea of a Gowerian new plan. Modern criticism is none too happy with the Marriage Group, which is understandable in the light of some of the wild claims that 5

Fisher, pp 294-95. The italics are mine.

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have been made for it.6 Yet its basic concept is inescapable, by virtue of the discussion that some tales go in for with specific reference to the Wife of Bath and her theme of marriage. Consisting of seven tales from the correct period (Groups III-IV-V/Fragments DEF), the Marriage Group was originally seen as four tales alternating with three thematically unrelated ones and discussing marriage from a variety of viewpoints, both temporal and spiritual, with the Wife of Bath providing their basic impetus. These are the Wife’s Prologue and Tale, the Clerk’s Prologue and Tale, the Merchant’s Prologue and Tale and the Franklin’s Prologue and Tale. Later emendations have come up with more tales, including one of the initially excluded ones, the Squire’s Tale, but these lack the specific reference to the Wife of Bath that so securely links the others. It is indeed very likely that several tales from outside Kittredge’s original group were meant to be included or were so included, even if they do not specifically refer to the Wife of Bath. A major case in point is the Man of Law. Though it is unmistakably the Wife of Bath who in her confrontational fashion kicks off the dbate, it is equally true that the Man of Law is the one who sets the ball rolling and marks Chaucer’s transition to a new concept for the entire Canterbury Tales. A later thematic refinement of the theory suggests that it is not so much marriage which is the central point of the debate but maistrie in marriage and thus, within terms of profane love versus sacred love, marriage of the body to moribund maistrie in this world vs the spirit’s marriage to the maistrie of Christ and life everlasting.7 Needless to say, the Man of Law’s Tale is perfectly suited to such a debate. In much the same way, it would be most surprising for Chaucer to have realised the suitability of the present Wife of Bath’s Tale for the Marriage Debate, yet to have overlooked the possibilities afforded by her original one. The marriage theme, so narrowly linked to the Man of Law and the Wife of Bath, is manifestly indebted to the Confessio Amantis. Despite his outward concern with amour courtois Gower comes up with several tales on the subject of married love and actually has Genius come down in its favour in several places, while ending his opus on a 6

Peter G. Beidler, ‘Transformations in Gower’s Tale of Florent and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale’, in Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange, ed. R.F. Yeager (Victoria, BC: English Literature Studies/U of Victoria, 1991): 100-14. 7 Fisher, pp 294-95.

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note that is close to a non-erotic definition of love.8 Ideal love, from a courtly point of view, is a lady’s service but it is a profane sort of love, designated usually as amor, which works through the senses, and is fundamentally a non-connubial thing. Its theological counterpart operates through the spirit. It is caritas – one of the three great virtues. In marriage these two types of love combine in a sacrament that reflects the spirit’s union with Christ and metaphysically fuses the procreative act with God’s own powers of creation. It is the instrument through which amoral kinde – the sexual urge, chiefly – is restrained and formalized by the reason brought to bear upon it by society through the wisdom of God’s word. This train of thinking, which crops up in various places where Genius speaks, is something that must have profoundly appealed to Chaucer for him to have applied it as the major issue in his post-Testament writing. It may therefore well be that we are on the track here of something truly special, for the situation suggests once again that the Canterbury Tales are Chaucer’s Testament of Love in a double fashion. On the one hand, they were the obvious means that Chaucer sought to use in order to demonstrate his superiority in the 1390/91 duel or, if one wishes, reading sessions; on the other, once this was over, they were made to serve as a tribute to his nestor by further exploring the latter’s intriguing discussion of the “honeste love” of marriage. This makes good sense, as a yin-and-yang sort of alternation of war and peace, discord and concord, a passion and a lassitude. The debate is opened by Man of Law arguing that marriage is all about steadfast endurance, reflecting the spirit’s submission to the humanly incomprehensible vagaries of Fortune which are ultimately revealed to be guided by a benevolent Providence, in much the same way that Griselda’s trials in the Clerk’s Tale are resolved when Walter’s harsh “maistrie”, which is really God’s, is ultimately shown to be conciliatory. Constancy, steeled by adversity, leads to bliss. What he also seems to argue (and with this we are in the middle of a debate that continues well into the Reformation) is that self-effacement or, rather, the non-exertion of free will is an absolute prerequisite for the proper working of constancy and the attainment of heaven. Naturally, the Wife dismisses the Man of Law’s words as foolishness by turning everything upside down and claiming that the 8

Lawlor, 113ff.

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essence of marriage is a lady’s service, interpreted by her as nothing less than licence for unrestrained sexuality, in total disregard of its sacramental aspect. Submission to herself, surrender of her husbands’ free will to hers, is what leads to bliss and the devil may care about the rest, God, authority and all. She is determined to have her will. It is this contrast, complemented by a persistently involved element of gentilesse, that is worked out by the rest of the Marriage Group. It is gratifying to find that, here and there, very similar ideas have been presented. Fisher, whose insights sometimes run close to mine, suggests that the Marriage Group is set to a double theme, with maistrie as the negative aspect and gentilesse as the positive bond. He feels that “these themes were first joined the way Chaucer joins them in Gower’s Tale of Florent and Mirour de l’omme”.9 Or, to put it more clearly, Florent and the Mirour were the first to combine the concepts of maistrie and gentilesse and these are the sources from which Chaucer took his maistrie/gentilesse notions. Even more simply, the Marriage Group as a whole debates a variety of Gower-derived aspects of love and marriage and their religious implications. As such it is closer to Gower than the new plan, adding to its virtue-vice one-way journey to Canterbury the signal element of divinely institutionalized love – God’s word and the laws of reason vs kinde. The gentilesse argument is there to underscore this: what we do and who we are is not based on lineage or wealth but on true nobility of the spirit. The Wife of Bath’s Debt to Gower We may by this time well ask what is it about the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale that makes them the overwhelming demonstration of Chaucer’s debt to Gower that I claim for them. As it is, on most aspects little more than their pointing out and an awareness of their fundamentally Gowerian nature is required to show how patently the Prologue and Tale are inspired by the Confessio Amantis. Clearest of all is the point that most of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue is literally a confession and while engaged in this confession she proves herself to 9

Fisher, pp 294-95. This is not necessarily correct. The association of maistrie and gentilesse is also encountered in the Clerk’s Tale, which may stem from Chaucer’s Italian period. It also crops up in the Parson’s discussion of Pride [461-63], where maistrie signifies the domination of sin over a person and gentilesse its virtuous counterpart. Here, however, a debt to Gower is well within reason.

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be an expert in love matters, what with her five husbands and “oother compaignye in youthe”, her roving eye and her “wandrynge by the weye”. What this means ought to be supremely obvious once again. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue is nothing if not a lover’s confession, a confessio amantis by a senex amans that repeats the essence of Gower’s great opus but with a double twist: the sins against love to which she confesses are not accompanied by any sense of contrition, and the lady’s service and gentilesse that she claims are a parody of Gower’s vision of courtly love. Of course, the type of confession that we are dealing with here is confession of sin. Regrettably, critics and editors have contributed much confusion on this point. Benson speaks of a literary confession, while Robinson calls it “at once a confession, an apologia, and a program of matrimonial reform”.10 He, too, means by confession a literary matter rather than one of the confessional, yet this latter aspect is precisely what the Wife’s Prologue is all about and one of the facets of this study that is easily demonstrated. On the other hand, his “program of matrimonial reform” is simply not credible. It equates the Wife’s voice with Chaucer’s own ideas, for which there is no foundation. It is one of life’s finer points of irony, therefore, that the first to point out the debt owed in her Prologue to the medieval confessional voice was Jerry Root in 1994, who uses this to work out a feministoriented concept of “space to speke” and in doing so totally bypasses the implications of the Wife’s all-out confession of sin.11 Confession necessarily deals with the commission and admission of mortal sin. A point of major significance is the demonstrable fact that in the course of her confession the Wife, in full conformity with Amans and the remedial exempla offered by Genius, owns up to 10

Benson, p 11; Robinson, p 7. Root: 252-74. He takes both the Wife’s theme and the first 162 lines of the Prologue to be part of the Wife’s confession. The point missed is that these lines constitute a running argument against scriptural authority and are not in any sense a confession. Root further argues that the Wife appropriates the Prologue’s anti-feminist sources in order to build up a “reified image of women” (whatever this may mean) and concludes that “her truth and her ‘privetee’ cannot be contained by the seal of confessional secrecy”, thus giving us a Chaucer using confession as licence to speak in defiance of “the most well established and traditional authorities”. Needless to say, this is not my Chaucer nor do we seem to be speaking the same language. Also cf Barry Sanders, ‘Chaucer’s Dependence on Sermon Structure in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’, SMC 4 (1974): 437-45, who notes sermon elements of all sorts, including “degenerate pulpit rhetoric”, but reads them as homiletic satire by the Wife. 11

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all the Seven Deadly Sins in a great variety of forms and shapes. Even her own fundamental sin of Inobedience – strictly speaking a subclassification of Pride but, more specifically, the primal sin that caused Eve to bring death and destruction down on mankind and so the mother of all sins – reflects Amans’ situation. Thus what we find repeated here is Gower’s very own notion of the Seven Deadly Sins within his very own frame of a lover’s confession and applied in a very similar way. Then there is the Wife of Bath as a character. She is a compound creation, easily encompassing the three major dramatis personae of the Confessio. She looks like a female version of Amans, as a confessing and elderly (senex) lover – an observation that is selfevident – but with a measure of Genius thrown in. She needs no priest or other male mouthpiece for the feminist doctrine she preaches ably enough herself – this is a role which she takes upon herself with great gusto and which is reflected in the sermon scheme to which everything that she says will be shown to adhere. At the same time, she is the Dame Venus of the Canterbury Tales and as such she is easily recognized as Chaucer’s ironic rendition of Gower’s Venus. Her Venerean nature is most emphatically drawn nor do her portrait in the General Prologue and the one that she comes up with herself leave any doubt on this point. Venus crops up again and again, and not just that – she manifestly stands for Venus as the force of kinde, that is, amoral sexuality that is neither restrained by reason or the bounds of human and divine law.12 But where Gower’s Venus represents an elevated vision of earthly love, the Wife of Bath stands for something much greedier and more carnal – a debased vision. In doing so she may well embody Chaucer’s satirical assessment of what courtly love ultimately comes down to, once women are free to demand it rather than have it bestowed on them. The crowning touch here – and a complex one, as we shall discuss later – is the combination whereby the Wife of Bath is made to perform as a preacher who emphasizes a Gowerian theme with the aid of a sermon exemplum whose profane, mock-courtly application thinly overlies its spiritual import.13 This, too, repeats the basic scenario of the Confessio Amantis in which Genius similarly blends courtly and spiritual applications. In point of fact, as a preacher, the Wife is recognizably a purveyor of concupiscence, an interpretation that may well 12 13

Baker: 152-57. Cf Sanders: 437-45.

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be read as a piece of Chaucerian criticism directed at Venus’ twotongued Priest and possibly even his creator. To be precise, we recognize the Confessio Amantis to be not just a confession of sin set to a selective manuel de pecheux but a voluminous sermon on the subject of courtly and spiritual love at the same time which is not without its internal contradictions. We find something similar again with the Wife of Bath, and with a vengeance. Whereas the Confessio Amantis shows a loose sermon structure chiefly consisting of confessional dialogues followed up by a serial presentation of sermon exempla and their application, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale as a whole are demonstrably built up along much stricter lines. Her Prologue is a confession in both the literary and religious sense of the word, but together with the Tale it also constitutes what comes down to a recognizable sermon preached according to the rules for sermons known as the “modern university type” or modernus modus predicandi. Chaucer includes the three required levels of interpretation known as the letter, the sense and the sentence.14 This may be a novel insight, as Chaucer scholardom has rarely gone beyond admitting that “Pardoner and Friar seem to regard the Wife’s performance as a kind of sermon”, drawing as it does on pulpit rhetoric and exempla.15 The notion that the Prologue and Tale function on more than one level has occasionally been recognized but without any clear awareness of their fundamentally homiletic nature. How close the Gower connection is in the matter of the Wife’s preaching efforts is seen in the theme of her sermon: the “wo that is in mariage”, as preached from the commonsense perspective of experience. A familiar theme in medieval literature, this may nevertheless derive directly, as I discuss later, from the opening lines of Book I of the Confessio Amantis, so near in both place and time – providing yet another indicator of Chaucer’s debt to Gower. Similarly, the fusion of narrative entertainment with confession, the Deadly Sins and sermonizing into a single whole is entirely Gowerian, even if and well in keeping with the challenge Chaucer’s way of dealing with all of this seeks to be more sophisticated. A point to pause upon is the contention in these pages that the Wife of Bath’s confession is also part and parcel of the sermon that 14 The subject is addressed well in Robert P. Merrix’s article on ‘The Sermon Structure in the Pardoner’s Tale’, ChauR 17 (1983): 235-54. See also Chapter Eight. 15 Benson, p 865.

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she preaches. Can something be a sermon and a confession simultaneously? St Augustine afficionados will surely admit to the overlappingness of the two. Siegfried Wenzel, on the other hand, addressing this point with respect to the Pardoner, is scathing: “I have yet to see an actual sermon, which, like the The Pardoner’s Prologue, uses selfrevelation as its pro-theme”.16 In answer to this, Robert Merrix points out the frequent self-confessed unworthiness that medieval preachers profess.17 Though one feels that this is not exactly the same thing, it provides a starting point. More useful is the observation that Wenzel is wrong to equate the Pardoner’s sermon with an actual sermon. The Canterbury Tales is a work of fiction and within this work we are dealing with a fictional sermon, subject not only to the rules of good preaching but those of good writing as well. In the meantime, we should not forget that the way for this literary fusion of confession and sermon was prepared by none other than John Gower and repeated, though differently applied, by the Parson’s Tale, which refutes Wenzel in its own fashion. For the time being, let us note that the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale have the hallmark of being a much improved miniature Confessio Amantis. As we have seen again and again, improvement upon Gower is precisely what we should expect for the duel to be really on. Any effective reply to his taunts (or invitation, if one wishes) must needs lie in a satisfactory demonstration of Chaucer’s genius, in outperforming his challenger on his own chosen ground. Among other things, we find this in the improved homiletic structure that has just been mentioned but, doubtless, its best proof should reside in one or two tales demonstrably borrowed from Gower yet superior in their treatment of their subjects.18 Such a superior tale exists in the shape of the Wife of Bath’s Tale, which is the closest known analogue to Gower’s tale of Florent, and much of the evidence required is available. While such early analogue researchers as Margaret Schlauch are unwilling to go beyond admitting that the “resemblances are due to the use of common sources” and Benson fails to do much with the implications of his acknowledgement that Chaucer was acquainted with Gower’s version, 16

Wenzel, ‘Contemporary Reading’: 140. See Chapter Eight. 18 This is a matter of equilibrium: too many Gowerian tales would make Chaucer a mere imitator, too few would make it impossible for anyone to recognize their slant. 17

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it is this study’s contention that with respect to the Wife of Bath we are actually dealing with a case of direct borrowing from Gower and doing so in order to provide a transparent reaction to the challenge.19 We find ourselves once again in the company of John Fisher, who points out that “the differences in his version are best explained as a conscious alteration designed to improve the pace and structure of the story and to adapt it to the new conception of the Wife of Bath”, a suggestion that is both simple and wise.20 There is even an additional likelihood that the Wife of Bath’s Tale is Chaucer’s combined rendition of two Confessio Amantis elements: the tale of Florent and Gower’s discourse on gentilesse, which we discuss below. It is probably best to define Chaucer’s version of the latter, the crone’s bedroom lecture, as a brief sermon of sorts. This is how it is generally referred to, but always in a figurative sense and not in the literal fashion that we are speaking of now. The above picture gives us a valuable insight into what Chaucer must have meant the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale to be with respect to the Confessio Amantis: the perfect answer – a tale meant to turn the tables on Gower, in which he is defeated by his own strategems, the same or similar strictures and structures, devices and tales, and all in order to demonstrate what courtly love comes down to in the hands of such ruthlessly profane lovers as the Wife of Bath – or Gower, for that matter. Add to this the ultimate sting of what we shall come to know as the implicit self-refutation of the Wife’s Tale or what Lenvoy de Chaucer says, and Chaucer’s point is clear. A Confessio Amantis like Gower’s is all about “the taste of that forbidden fruit”, it is Eve tempting Adam all over again, it is body over soul and matter over mind. It is an invitation to blind oneself to the joys of heaven in favour of the pleasures of the flesh, a reversal of divinely ordained order and a return to the law of kinde, emphatically underlined by the theme of female domination that is preached by the incarnation of Dame Venus, better known to us as the Wife of Bath. It seems a good idea, for the sake of clarity, to go through the various points of correspondence methodically. The Wife of Bath’s 19

Margaret Schlauch, English Medieval Literature and Its Social Foundation (London: Oxford UP, 1967), p 224; Benson, p 872; Chaucer’s reaction is found in the loathly hag’s speech on gentilesse, which, on one level, may be reproof of Gower’s ideas on the subject. 20 Fisher, p 296.

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Prologue and Tale are the obvious answer to Gower’s challenge, combining all the significant elements of the Confessio Amantis with a sophisticated Chaucerian answer and fitting the requirements so well that inspiration by the Confessio Amantis is almost inescapable. They coincide with what was specified in Chapter Two as a narrow and detailed imitation, which in itself is remarkable. The more obvious points of correspondence include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

a senex amans a Venus-like figure a lover’s confession the Seven Deadly Sins confessed to a preacher a Gowerian theme a prologue discussing biblical matters extensive glossing throughout (see p 82) a kinde and resoun debate a comprehensive sermon structure the use of the confession as an integral part of the sermon the preaching of a sermon exemplum with a Venerean application the preaching of a sermon exemplum with a spiritual application the use of a tale also used by Gower in the Confessio Amantis in illustration of the very same sin the use within this same exemplum of a sermonette on the subject of gentilesse, which echoes the Confessio courtly love elements a final sentence pronounced on the lover.

It is hardly necessary to point out, in partial repetition of what we observed in Chapter Two, that the combination of Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, Man of Law’s Tale and Parson’s Tale is more than sufficient as a miniature Confessio Amantis or, rather, a Testament of Love that outperforms Gower on several, if not all levels of his challenge. In fact, given a proper exegetical awareness of how everything that the Wife says points to the Confessio Amantis, it is obvious that it is sufficient onto itself as a Testament of Love, with the other two serving as useful keys to its unriddling but not truly essential parts

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of it. This ought to be the proper place, therefore, for a chapter summary and a passing on to a more detailed substantiation of theory outlined here. What restrains us, however, is the remarkable fact that among the tales of the new plan there is one further combination of prologue and tale which is constructed in an almost identical fashion. The Wife of Bath’s Twin: the Pardoner Armed with this knowledge, a person would be inclined to think of one of the subsequent Marriage Group tales. But no – there is nothing to link it to the subject of marriage at all. What we are dealing with are the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale. This may come as rather a surprise. Surely there is not all that much to link them with the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, apart from the relative length of the Prologue and the use of a typical sermon exemplum for his Tale? Appearances will be deceptive, for they are actually singularly alike. Let us consider the Wife and the Pardoner for a moment. Conceptually, their basic difference, besides gender, is a matter of drive. She is motivated by her unabating search for love, she is a lover for all her nonconformist quirks. He is, as the Host notes so perceptively, driven by anger more than anything else, which makes him an excellent counterpart for the Wife. All the same, for all his anger and what else springs from it, he has been fitted into the same structures and strictures as the Wife of Bath. Anger drives him, but pride is what rules him and love of earthly things is how he gratifies these two urges, much like the Wife of Bath does. They are two mercenary travelling salespersons – she offering sexual bliss in exchange for maistrie, he promising the joys of heaven at the drop of a groat. Not surprisingly, therefore, we recognize in them two kindred souls – they are grabbers, graspers, devourers and, as such, symbols of the negative forces ruling the medieval universe. Something complementary to this has been pointed out by Anne Kernan, who notes that the two of them reflect sterility, come up with autobiographical prologues, and tell tales that include significant projections of the narrators in the shape of the Loathly Lady and the Old Man.21 From a textual point of view the correspondences are also considerable, for both draw extensively on St Jerome’s Epistola adversus Jovinianum and the Roman de la Rose.22 21 22

Anne Kernan, ‘The Archwife and the Eunuch’, ELH 41 (1974): 1-25. Benson, p 904.

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Interestingly, the Pardoner’s Prologue is furthermore linked textually with the Man of Law, for the “use of Innocent III’s De miseria condicionis humane [...] associates the work with the Man of Law’s Prologue”, while at the same time the “extensive use of Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum associates [the Man of Law] with the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and the Merchant’s Tale”. This also holds good for the Sins of the Tavern in the Pardoner’s Tale.23 The Pardoner’s Prologue is a confession, just like the Wife’s, set to a theme which is continued in his Tale, a sermon exemplum, preached for purely selfish purposes that spring from Pride yet ultimately culminate in an implicit act of public self-condemnation. Just like the Wife, he is so steeped in his particular sin that he recognizably encompasses all the other Deadly Sins in various guises as well. If she is unregenerate Eve, up to the old tricks of her “olde daunce”, he is her complementary unregenerate Adam.24 Most of all he is like the Wife of Bath because his Prologue and Tale are ingeniously incorporated in the very same kind of sermon structure. This brings us very close what Emile Legouis once defined as the two main themes of the Canterbury Tales: love and religion, the wife and the priest.25 Like the Wife also, he is readable as a refutation of Gower, this time exposing Genius’ two-faced service of God and Venus as timeserving (one cannot serve God and one’s own cupiditas simultaneously) and thus at the end of the day as a slipslide to damnation. The Pardoner’s Tale is not one of the tales whose analogue we find in Gower – regrettably so, for this would have been a most convincing piece of evidence. But we have the next best thing in the form of his Prologue, which contains several passages on his hypocrisy that are a close parallel to the Priest’s discussion of the same subject in the Confessio Amantis.26 True, the subject of religious hypocrisy is a familiar one in Chaucer’s day and could have come from a variety of sources. What points in Gower’s direction, besides his book’s nearness in time and place, is the presence of some textual correspondences that are too interesting to be dismissed as coincidence and are more readily explained as a memory traceable to the Confessio. 23

Benson, pp 904-05. Also see Chapter Six, under Koeppel’s Evidence. Robert P. Miller, ‘Chaucer’s Pardoner, the Scriptural Eunuch, and the Pardoner’s Tale’, in Schoeck & Taylor: 221-244, at 241. 25 Emile Legouis, Geoffrey Chaucer (London: s.n., 1913), p 153. 26 Macaulay, vol ii: Confessio Amantis, Book I, ll.594-645. 24

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It seems to me that a major key to understanding the inclusion of the Pardoner’s performance must lie in Gower’s profound anticlericalism. As Scanlon notes, much of the Confessio’s subject matter is dominated by Gower’s disgust of contemporary clerical abuse, which he sees as infecting the Church from high to low. And yet there is also a suggestion of being spellbound: “He is clearly as fascinated by the Church’s power to fabricate divine authority as he is appalled by it”.27 Are these aspects of clerical corruption and its fascination not reminiscent of the Pardoner? In his person Chaucer has created a character who is more perverse than anything that Gower comes up with and easily outdoes the worst of simoniacs in his book, yet weaves his own almost inextricable spell. In doing so, Chaucer shows himself well capable of rivalling Gower on his own speciality – something that also helps to explain why someone so given to innuendo rather than outspokenness should in the Pardoner’s case have gone overboard to record this person’s spiritual corruption in minute detail. What remains true of course is that lacking a parallel tale in the Confessio Amantis, the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale are necessarily less Gowerian than the Wife’s sermon with its analogue tale of Florent. Yet their striking and extensive correspondences with both the Wife of Bath and the Confessio mark them as further major evidence in support of a Gowerian inspiration of the Wife’s part in the Canterbury Tales, particularly since they serve to emphasize that we are indeed dealing with structural correspondences and allow us to discard the possibility of having misread random parallels. The points of accordance, including such reversed points as 1, 2 and 13, that the Pardoner’s account shares with the Confessio are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

27

a person driven by anger such a person’s confession the Seven Deadly Sins confessed to a Priest-like figure preaching extensive glossing of the Tale the portrayal of the Pardoner as a hypocrite along lines echoing the Confessio Amantis’ discussion of religious hypocrisy

Scanlon, p 260, and pp 248-97 generally.

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7. the portrayal of the Pardoner as a simoniac along similar lines 8. a comprehensive sermon structure 9. the use of the confession as an integral part of the sermon 10. the preaching of a remedial sermon exemplum with a profane application. 11. the preaching of a remedial sermon exemplum with a spiritual application 12. the presence of a sermon within the sermon 13. a final judgement of the angry man. Both in the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner do we come across the curious phenomenon of a sermon within a a sermon. In the Wife’s case, this is true in a loose sense of the word. The loathly hag of her Tale preaches a lectio, adorned with various homiletic devices, on the theme that gentilesse is a matter of virtue. The Pardoner’s sermon that we find within his wider sermon is more complicated and the reason for this surprising exercise is not so easily understood. We recognize that Chaucer is here giving a virtuoso performance that leaves Gower far behind, but this fails to explain why he should have chosen such a wheels-within-wheels device. Perhaps, I am over-intellectualizing the problem and ought to read the situation as simply a reflection of Chaucer’s awareness that in a sense the entire Confessio represents one huge sermon composed of scores of internal sermonettes and a hint on his part that he understood this. Yet there is a perfectly good technical explanation possible as well, whose mechanics are discussed later. All of the above points also conform with, or provide a negative contrast to, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, which actually makes them very much alike. And so they can be shown to be. Wife and Pardoner confess to their sinful practices, they preach, and they stand convicted by their own words. Apart from this, they have some other mutual traits that further underline their close relationship: 1. the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner are physically and spiritually sterile 2. they are complementary constructs, serving as the manifestations of an impenitent Adam and Eve

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3. they are travelling salespersons, manipulators, scoffers, amorally preaching for their own profit and achieving their ends by hoodwinking their victims – the evil genii of the pilgrimage 4. their themes are closely related: both maistrie and cupiditas are plain facets of a perverted caritas 5. their narratives are significantly indebted to the Parson’s Tale, unlike any of the other tales 6. their tales both include a brief sermon within the wider sermon parameters 7. the Wife of Bath’s Loathly Lady and the Pardoner’s Old Man are demonstrably parallel constructs 8. the Wife and the Pardoner both get exposed explicitly: she in Lenvoy de Chaucer, he at the hands of a maddened Host 9. the exposure is effected in both cases through the addition of a second moralitas to the application of their tales (in the Wife’s case: Lenvoy de Chaucer). The Narrative Relation of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner While it is a wonderful surprise to find that the Testament of Love includes a prologue and tale from such an unexpected direction, it is not altogether easy to see how and where the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale fit into its scheme. Doubtless we must associate their writing directly with that of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. Their evident conceptual and structural closeness strongly argues that we are dealing with the twin offspring of one and the same creative impulse. Yet this must not be taken to mean that Chaucer conjured them up at the drop of a hat. Rather, we should think in terms of the remodelling of earlier writing. There is a good case to be made for an earlier stage characterized by a retaliatory telling of tales, involving both the Shipman’s Tale and an earlier version of the Pardoner’s Tale. If this goes a long way to account for the Pardoner’s involvement, there may have been a further reason as well. What if Chaucer set out upon his Testament of Love by casting the Wife as a confessant and the Pardoner as her confessor? That such a division of parts did not work out ultimately is obvious but need not mean that he did not seriously look into its possibilities or actually tried it out.

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In their narrative order and assuming them to have been planned initially as a literary duet, which is the most logical explanation of their extreme correspondence, we are obliged to take the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale with their extensive association with Gower to have been first in the original sequence of tales. This is a consideration that conforms to what we deduced earlier from the Man of Law’s Epilogue. Presumably, the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale were to have come immediately or very soon after the Wife. The alternative order, with the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale coming first, leading up as it were to the subsequent explosion in the shape of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and all that follows (which we find in Skeat’s edition and in the “Bradshaw shift”), does not bear close scrutiny. The idea of the Pardoner shrewdly realizing what the Wife’s preaching has been all about and attempting to outdo her is perfectly appropriate – whereas the Wife of Bath imitating the Pardoner (and a humiliated Pardoner at that, ultimately) is inconsistent with her independent stance and runs into all sorts of difficulty along the way. It is a plausible thought that Chaucer originally intended the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale to be a twin rebuttal of Gower, exposing Venus and her Priest (disguised as the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner) as evil tempters at the wayside of man’s heavenward pilgrimage as well as demonstrating his own superiority. But if he did have such an answer to Gower in mind when he wrote the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, he must have discarded it soon after completing the Testament of Love and parked the Pardoner elsewhere. There is evidence of changes in both the ending of the Wife’s Prologue and the Pardoner’s Tale which may well be related to this.28 A major reason why these occurred may have been because Chaucer’s attention was in due course taken up by the Marriage Debate as a continuation of Gower’s love theme, which saw the Pardoner replaced by the Clerk and the Merchant as the ones best suited to provide a direct response to the Wife’s revolutionary view of marriage. Whatever their exact position in the Testament of Love, the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale provide ample corroboration of the inter28

Robert A. Pratt, ‘The Development of the Wife of Bath’, in: MacEdward Leach, ed. Studies in Medieval History in Honour of Professor Albert Croll Baugh (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1961): 45-79, considers the conception of the Wife of Bath to have covered a considerable period of time.

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pretation that has been argued for the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale are a good key to all that the Wife of Bath expounds: they confirm the Seven Deadly Sin basis along confessional lines, they figure a narrator preaching largely along the lines of regular sermonizing procedure, they come up with a selfincriminating sermon exemplum, and even end upon a similar twist in the shape of an application that is meant to serve their own greedy ends but is ultimately their condemnation. They are a serendipitous control, an unlooked-for yardstick whereby any dissection of the Wife of Bath can be reliably checked. Of course, the reverse also holds good: the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale are an excellent key towards the unriddling of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale. A point worth clarifying here is what I assume to be the exact relation of the Wife, Pardoner and Parson to their counterparts in the Confessio Amantis. As a lover with a highly Venerean streak the Wife of Bath is a plain amalgam of Venus and Amans, like whom she is also a senex amans. Her accomplished preaching further identifies her as someone comprising marked aspects of Genius the Priest in her make-up. Apparently, she was basically conceived to serve as an allround answer to Gower’s three major protagonists, just as her Prologue and Tale are sufficient as a solo reply to the Confessio itself. The Pardoner and the Parson are a different matter altogether. It seems to me that they both derive from the figure of the Priest, who serves the double and not always easy function of acting as Venus’ spokesman, which doctrinally comes down to serving a false god, and a true priest at the same time. What Chaucer appears to have done is assign his shadow side to the Pardoner, whom he proceeded to make a much darker character by turning him into the evil genius to the Canterbury undertaking. The Parson, on the other hand, reflects Genius’ good side but, as a truly good man, outperforms him by being stricter and thus better at the office of saving souls. The Original Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale In the above pages we have come across a variety of reasons why we should take the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and the Pardoner’s Tale as something originally conceived as a twin answer to the challenge issued by Gower, with the Parson closely involved as the third party. As we noted there, the inference is that the Pardoner

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was immediately preceded by the Wife in the initial order of tales but that, ultimately, new developments – chief of which may have been the creation of the so-called Marriage Group – caused Chaucer to place the Pardoner elsewhere. There are good indications that they were at one time closely linked together, engaged in a quarrel along the familiar lines of a retaliatory telling of tales, but that this was discarded when, after some considerable rewriting, Chaucer switched to the Marrriage Debate. This is how the original situation allows itself to be reconstructed. First of all, like all the other pilgrims, the Wife of Bath ought to have been invited by the Host to come forward with a tale. This part appears to be actually preserved in the Prologue, not at its head but beginning at line 184 and now assigned to the Pardoner. We have already seen that a substitution of “this Pardoner” by “oure goode Hoost” or something like it is easily effected. The passage itself is fully along Chaucer’s usual lines of introducing a tale. It is an entirely natural beginning and if the Wife of Bath’s Prologue had come down to us with its first 183 lines missing and actually reading “oure goode Hoost” where it now says “this Pardoner”, no one would ever have noticed or complained. But there is more: the invitation provides a perfect sequel to the lines upon which the Man of Law’s Epilogue ends. In point of fact, this realization helps us to understand one of the obscure aspects of the composition of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and the Man of Law’s Epilogue. Let us tackle the Epilogue first, because this will automatically lead us to the older Wife of Bath. For this, we must have another look at our amended version of Fisher’s reconstruction of the Epilogue’s original ending and add to this the Pardoner’s invitation for the Wife to tell her tale, but with the Pardoner now replaced by the Host. The first four lines [1178-81], as well as those preceding them, were evidently up for revision, but I include them because it gives us the Host scathingly introducing a new narrator, only to be overruled – as he has been before – by the Wife. The italics signal my incursions into Chaucer’s text, which partly follow John Fisher: “Now! goode men,” quod oure Hoste, “herkeneth me; Abydeth, for Goddes digne passioun, For we schal han a predicacioun; This Lollere heer wil prechen us somwhat.” “Nay, by my moder soule, that schal he nat!

The Testament of Love | 167 Seyde the Wyf of Bathe; “heer schal he nat preche;29 He schal no gospel glosen here ne teche. We leven alle in the grete God,”quod she*; “He wolde sowen som difficulte, Or springen cokkel in oure clene corn. And therfore, Hoost, I warne thee biforn, My joly body schal a tale telle, And I schal clynken you so mery a belle; That I schal waken al this compaignie. But it schal not ben of philosophie, Ne phislyas, ne termes queinte of lawe. Ther is but litel Latyn in my mawe!” [EpiMLT 1178-90] “Dame, I wolde praye yow, if youre wyl it were,” Seyde oure goode Hoost, “as ye began, Telle forth youre tale, spareth for no man, And teche us yonge men of youre praktike.” “Gladly,”quod she, “sith it may yow like; But yet I praye to al this compaignye, If that I speke after my fantasye, As taketh not agrief of that I seye. Now, sire, now wol I telle forth my tale. As evere moote I drynken wyn or ale, I shal seye sooth….” [WBP 184-95ff]

Even if, to judge by the rhyme, one or more lines have gone missing at the point of juncture, this is not just an excellent fit and appropriate introduction to the Wife’s story-telling, including the same sort of initial hemming and hawing that we find elsewhere. It also explains why her tone is so mild and her reply uses the polite form of address. In the version with which we are familiar she clashes firmly with the Pardoner and tells him off in emphatic terms of “thee” and “thou”, which is quite to the point, only to continue inexplicably in a different spirit with the rather incompatible “yow” and “sire”. Here this issue is well resolved. What evidently happened was that Gower’s challenge led Chaucer to decide on a new approach for the Prologue and start with a debate on serial marriage, lines 1-162, in order to introduce his new theme and to make this serve as the foundation for the Wife’s marriage advertisement within the sermon scheme that he had decided upon (see Chapter Seven). We realize that this passage, with its non29 I realize that, while the Wife of Bath is the obvious one to enter into the fray here, the scansion is faulty. Thus something like “goode wyfe” or a similar phrase is needed to get things truly in line.

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confessional nature and heavy debt to St Jerome, is distinct from the Wife’s subsequent confession and its varied sources.30 It looks like something that was affixed to it without regard for the original introduction, which it ineffectualized. With a bit of reshuffling of a subsequent passage involving the Pardoner, Chaucer appears to have reassigned the Host’s invitation to the former, thereby overlooking or postponing a correction of telltale personal pronouns. Another consequence of this intervention was that the Man of Law’s Epilogue was left dangling, though, given some revision, still potentially serviceable as an introduction to the Wife. It was preserved among Chaucer’s papers, but probably required too much rewriting for Chaucer to use it again soon. Its unrevised state suggests that the uncoupling of the Wife of Bath from the Sergeant of the Law was either a definitive one or something whose revision he never got around to. We deduce this from the consideration that a proper link between the Man of Law and the Wife of Bath is a high-priority requirement for the Testament of Love, as this figures the Man of Law as the Wife’s herald. For reasons which are obscure at this point Chaucer appears to have failed to come up with any such link and, instead, took pains to transform the Host’s original invitation into a witty interruption on the Pardoner’s part. The Host’s invitation to the Wife of Bath was most probably followed by an account of her “praktike” to fit those of the heroine of her old tale. As we shall find later,31 the tripartite division of the Wife’s marital account as we know it is intimately associated with her sermonizing and further serves to expose her as an inveterate sinner, two aspects which are directly referrable to Gower’s challenge. Doubtless her old Prologue was briefer. Similarly, it is a likely assumption that there were not so many husbands to begin with and that both her portrait in the General Prologue and her own Prologue were at some time rewritten to come up with the number of five marriages. The five-husband situation is directly associated with the passage about Christ and the Samaritan, whose implication and signalling function are elements crucial not just to her defence of serial marriage but to her whole sermon, so that it does not seem probable that it should have been present at an earlier stage. 30 31

Benson, pp 864-67. See Chapter Seven, The Wife of Bath’s Sermon.

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Thus one feels that original situation for the Wife of Bath’s Prologue was, at most, an account of her first three marriages, garnished with some of the usual trappings that we find with headlinks. This need not have gone much beyond what is now line 222, which is where she takes up the subject of her chiding practices, though we shall come across indications that parts of the later passages were also present already.32 In fact, the entire subject of serial marriage looks like a later addition, so that it is well worth considering whether there may not have been just one old and cuckolded husband in the first place who was later expanded into the three that we are familiar with. This would provide an agreeable fit with the plot of the Shipman’s Tale, the tale that we believe to have been formerly assigned to her and which cannot be thought to have gained anything by the multiplicity of marriages that we are familiar with. It also agrees well with the various passages in which she describes how she treated her old husbands but speaks as if there was only one. And, as we shall find in Chapter Seven, the extra husbands were probably introduced for trinal reasons (three old husbands and three types of husband) when the Wife’s prologue was rewritten in order to serve as part of a sermon and the need came up for something threefold by way of divisiones. The extensive passage about the Wife’s chiding or some place very much like it seems a natural moment for the Pardoner to have popped up with his impertinent remarks: Up stirte the Pardoner, and that anon; “Now, dame,” quod he, “by God and by Seint John! Ye been a noble prechour in this cas. I was aboute to wedde a wyf; allas! What sholde I bye it on my flessh so deere? Yet hadde I levere wedde no wyf to-yeere!” [WBP, 163-68]

Such an interruption in the middle of her account of her shabby treatment of her old husband(s) would have been a much better situation for the Pardoner to sting her than the present conclusion of her defence of serial marriage, which is all about her willingness to engage in sexual activity in the marital bed and hardly the deterrent that he is implying. The word “prechour” could be a later addition, but 32

In particular, see Chapter Five on The Blocks of Sin in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue,.

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may just as well have been a fortunate choice of word from the very beginning. When later Chaucer remade the Prologue this part was shifted to line 163 and coupled to the Host’s original invitation for the Wife to tell her story. One feels that, just as in the present situation, the Pardoner with his high, unmanly voice threatened to make an immediate fool of her and she consequently retaliated at once. She snubbed him firmly,33 “Abide!” quod she, “my tale is nat begonne. Nay, thou shalt drynken of another tonne, Er that I go, shal savoure wors than ale.” [WBP, 169-71]

This allows itself to be read as a perfect announcement of a tale that is to be told in retribution for the Pardoner’s impertinence. From here the natural step would have been for her to inveigh (give or take a few characteristic asides) against “pardoners and othere hooly freres”. We find exactly such a passage in her present tale where it covers lines 857-81, replacing “pardoners” by “lymytours”. This passage about the magic of life being driven out by “the grete charitee and prayeres/Of lymytours and othere hooly freres” who infest the country really belongs with quaestores, for, surely, its conclusion is much better suited to our Pardoner: Wommen may go now saufly up and doun. In every bussh or under every tree Ther is noon oother incubus but he, And he ne wol doon hem but dishonour. [WBT, 878-81]

The meaning of the last two lines is that “the incubus always caused conception” but the friar brings “only dishonour upon a woman”.34 As a prick against the Friar, this is a meaningless insinu33 Not everybody seems to be susceptible to the Wife’s waspish voice. Kittredge, for one, writes that she reacts to the Pardoner “with great good humour, jocosely threatening further revelations”. Chaucer and His Poetry, (1915; Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1946), pp 187. So, too, Helen Storm Corsa, Chaucer, Poet of Mirth and Morality, (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 1964), pp 136, who sides with the Wife’s feminism and reads her snappish reaction as something “genial, almost benign”. 34 Benson, p 873, n. 881. Cf also Nicholas K. Kiessling: ‘D878-881’, ChauR 7 (1972): 113-16, who feels the incubus remark to refer to the violence of the incubus rather than its capacity to cause conception. I do not think that the context warrants any such interpretation. For the prick at the Friar’s virility, see Theodore Silverstein, ‘The Wife

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ation, as there is nothing in the Tales to suggest that his virility is in doubt. But as a retained bit of nastiness at the address of the Pardoner, the “geldyng” or “mare” of the company, it makes good sense. In this connection, we may note that various commentators have remarked that the Pardoner speaks “as if he belonged to a mendicant order.”35 It has been proposed, among other things, that he is meant to be seen as a renegade Dominican Friar, a supposition that finds some support in the consideration that the Dominicans were the century’s preachers par excellence.36Also, the Pardoner’s remark on the vita apostolica,37 which he rejects (“I wol noon of the apostles countrefete”) points in this direction, the implication being that he is one who by rights ought to follow this path. Thus, a Pardoner-Friar switch may have been facilitated and duly effected by their easy associability. Another consideration is that, if the Wife’s remarks really apply to the Friar, we ought to be in for some retaliation on his part, in full conformity with Chaucer’s wont, when he gets to tell his tale. Yet we come across nothing of the kind there, whereas various passages in the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale do appear to point to her. There is a further reason why the Wife’s present outburst is an important piece of the puzzle. These opening lines of the Wife of Bath’s Tale are a digression, thematically irrelevant to her subject beyond introducing the Arthurian setting but well-suited to the tale that she told earlier, the Shipman’s Tale with its hypocritical and lecherous opportunist priest, Daun John. It is true that in the final version that we know the Friar has just made a slight joke at her expense, even though it is a restrained one that implicitly warns her not to play with fire. Given the Wife’s evident allergy to clerics, her complaint is credible, but too strident, all the same. The Friar, however, seems just a later replacement of the Pardoner, as we see when we compare their interruptions:

of Bath and the Rhetoric of Enchantment; or, How to Make a Hero See in the Dark’, MP 58 (1954): 153-73. 35 Robinson, p 730 note 416. 36 Hinckley, p 45. Other suggestions are that he may be a mendicant friar (Benson, p 907 note 416) or an Austin canon: Muriel Bowden, A Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p 286; Marie P. Hamilton, ‘The Credentials of Chaucer’s Pardoner’, JEGP 40 (1941): 48-57. 37 R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), pp 280-83.

172 | The Testament of Love “Now, dame,” quod he, “by God and by seint John! Ye been a noble precchour in this cas”. [WBP, 164-65] “Now dame,” quod he, “so have I joye or blis, This is a long preamble of a tale”. [WBP, 830-31]

What the Friar also duplicates is the Pardoner’s function of introducing a retaliatory telling of tales. His words lead to a direct clash between himself and the Summoner, only to result in a punitive exchange. The implication is of course that the original Wife-Pardoner relation was similarly subject to such retribution. Let us go back to the Wife’s lashing words on the omnipresent and lecherous clergy infesting her world which are so well-suited to the Merchant of St Denis but solely contribute a small point to her present Tale. Here they are followed up by her story of the rapist knight brought to heel by the Loathly Lady. However, within this story we find a digression on women who “kan no conseil hyde” [WBT, 980] – the Wife’s own version of the tale of Midas’ ears. Once again this is a matter that, while sufficiently suited to the general tenor of her confession, does not seem to contribute anything new to either her portrait or her Tale. As Robertson points out, it reveals her spiritual deafness as typical of “someone who has undergone exactly the progress of Midas” and persists in allowing sensuality to dominate her reason.38 Its inclusion is rather unnecessary, since this aspect of the Wife is monolithically present throughout her Prologue and Tale and hardly warrants further emphasis, while the subject of being unable to keep a secret has no bearing on the Tale and may even be felt to detract from the maistrie argument which she so cogently puts forward. She is, admittedly, a great talker and easily sidetracked, so that this excursion is not difficult to take as a sardonic comment on Chaucer’s part, but it clashes with the narrative economy of most of her Tale’s continuation and does not in any significant sense contribute to it. Of course this is speculation but the Midas story becomes much more understandable if we take it to be a retained element of the Wife’s original introduction to what is now the Shipman’s Tale. The lady of this tale is precisely one of this sort, all too willing to betray even her bedroom secrets to the false monk Daun John. In doing so she uses almost the same words:

38

Robertson, ‘ Midas’: 1-20.

The Testament of Love | 173 Ful lief were me this conseil for to hyde, But out it moot; I may namoore abyde. [ShipT, 159-60]

This is the perfect environment for the Wife’s digression on Midas, whose wife had the selfsame difficulty with bottling up her conseil, and thus a much better situation to relate it to. Not surprisingly, the Pardoner picks this up in his tale when he inveighs against those in “whom that drynke hath dominacioun”. Such people “kan no conseil kepe” [PardT, 561]. We shall come back to this again. Meanwhile, we may note the presence of an earlier passage in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue that is similarly concerned with the keeping of the Wife’s conseil. It is found early in her account of her affair with Jankyn but looks back upon the way she dealt with her “housbonde”. From the context, we take this to be her fourth husband but in point of fact it could be just as well any of her old husbands or even better – as suggested by her use of the singular – the single old husband who has been proposed for the original situation. For this reason, it is not at all impossible that this passage was part of the original prologue, too, leading up to her Midas digression. The passage that we are talking of is the one about her gossip, her namesake Alisoun: She knew myn herte, and eek my privetee, Bet than our parisshe preest, so moot I thee! To hire biwreyed I my conseil al. For hadde myn housbonde pissed on a wal, Or doon a thyng that sholde han cost his lyf, To hire, and to another worthy wyf, And to my nece, which that I loved weel, I wolde han toold his conseil every deel. [WBP, 533-38]

These lines, with their ironical sequence of her heart’s secrets revealed only to her closest confidante and then to another worthy wife and then to her niece as well, would have been an excellent introduction of the Midas passage. Note, too, that the passage involved deals with the betrayal of bedroom secrets, which is something that is easily related to the heroine of the Shipman’s Tale. Whether so introduced or not, the Midas passage would have helped the Wife to get to the essentials of her original tale. It fits her well, for it is all about a fickle wife who is both mercenary and willing to overstep the bounds of marriage and whose voice and sentiments we recognize as identical to hers. Also, the notion that it was shifted

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away bodily together with the Wife’s original prologue sits well with the reassignation of her old tale to a new, this time male, narrator. If we accept that Chaucer worked along a system whereby major inconsistencies were generally ironed out but minor ones were left in abeyance (which may have been bound up with the manuscript status), this leaves us with a very acceptable result. Clearly there was no way that it could have been preserved as an introductory passage to the Merchant of St Denis, while its preservation as part of the Wife of Bath’s narrative produced no special problems, even if it was somewhat redundant. There is an interesting suggestion here of Chaucer as a parsimonious writer seeking to hold on to whatever he had written so far. As a way of putting paid to the Pardoner the Wife’s old tale is less successful – it does expose lechery and hypocrisy in the shape of one of its protagonists, Daun John, but leaves the wife of the tale open to much the same charges. The very same sort of vulnerability resides in the Midas story, which she maltreats frightfully. In doing so she provides ample grounds for refuting her, with special emphasis on spiritual deafness and blindness. It seems to me that this is intentional, serving to provide a firm basis for the old Pardoner to come to grips with the lady, along lines much like those proposed by Robertson.39 The Pardoner’s Original Reaction Very likely, this vulnerability of the Wife’s tale was intentional. In my reconstruction it enables the Pardoner, nothing loth, to use this in order to repay her, with a tale much like the one that we are familiar with but without any extended Prologue or the Sins of the Tavern and with a different outcome of his preaching efforts: the Wife of Bath being grudgingly compelled to come up and offer her groat (see below). There may have been a Prologue, but – as is largely true for the Wife of Bath as well – the one that we know was evidently written with an eye to Gower’s challenge. As a compound answer to the Gowerian requirements of a confession of all-out sinfulness and sermonizing at the same time, it can in its entirety hardly have been part of the original situation. Similarly, the Tavern Sins are so clearly indebted to the Parson’s Tale and authors such as St Jerome and Innocent III (see Chapter Six) that a late inclusion is hard to gainsay. 39

Robertson, ‘Midas’: 1-20.

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So what we are talking about, basically, is a Prologue which need not have been more than a brief headlink and a Tale that did not yet include the Sins of the Tavern. Interestingly, it seems well possible to retrieve the Pardoner’s original theme. It is a familiar datum that the Pardoner preaches a sermon which is set to the theme of Radix malorum est cupiditas. Yet anyone willing to stop and consider for a moment will realize that this is nowhere near the real theme that is illustrated by the exemplum of the three rioters, for plainly this is that the wages of sin is death. True, there is an element of cupiditas in the rioters’ hasardie but it is not displayed in any striking fashion. Swearing and gluttony are even less appropriate to the subject of cupiditas. However, all three fit in well with the old moral of the Tale. The rioters are not motivated by greed but by a proud desire to find and eradicate Death. What this suggests is that Chaucer’s reconstruction of the Pardoner’s part first led him to come up with a set of divisiones drawn from the Tale’s basic moral on the wages of sin. Only at a later moment, presumably when he had come up with the idea of the egoswollen Pardoner brought to heel through his own avarice, did he substitute this by the new theme of radix malorum est cupiditas. Yet even this need not have been a great step away from the original effort. The Parson gives us to understand that Pride is also the “roote of alle harmes” [387]. As this is much closer to the true moral of the Tale, it may therefore well be – as I believe – that the Pardoner’s cupiditas is simply a replacement of an earlier superbia. Even if the Prologue is a later innovation, its description of the Pardoner’s way of repaying those who have offended him is much to the point: it is all innuendo, oblique and nasty little hints which are understood by all and enable him to quash those to whom has taken a dislike. He is a bully, but a most insidious and reptilian one. …whan I dar noon oother weyes debate, Thanne wol I stynge hym with my tonge smerte In prechyng, so that he shal nat asterte To been defamed falsly, if that he Hath trespased to my bretheren or to me. For though I telle noght his propre name, Men shal wel knowe that it is the same, By signes, and by othere circumstances. Thus quyte I folk that doon us displesances; Thus spitte I out my venym under hewe Of hoolynesse, to semen hooly and trewe. [PardT, 412-22]

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To judge by these words and assuming that Chaucer’s conception of the Pardoner himself never substantially changed, any retaliation on the Pardoner’s part ought to be along these lines – nasty little comments whose object is to pull the intended victim down and smear him as much as he can. In this light, retribution for the Wife’s sally ought to be along very similar lines, since the Wife has so manifestly “trespased” against him. Given the Pardoner’s present admission of his “quytynge” practices it is a logical assumption that he is speaking with an eye to getting even with one of his fellow-pilgrims. In the final version of the Canterbury Tales, this is the poor Host, who is altogether innocent of having given offence. There is a good chance that what we have here is a memory of the earlier situation in which it was the Wife who was repaid for her snub. Given Chaucer’s frequent reluctance to throw out useful material, it may well be that part or parts of the original denouement are still around. The most likely passage for this is where the Pardoner describes his gaude (ploy, trick) of expressly forbidding unfaithful wives to come forward and be absolved by him: Goode men and wommen, o thyng warne I yow: If any wight be in this chirche now That hath doon synne horrible, that he Dar nat, for shame, of it yshryven be. Or any womman, be she yong or old, That hath ymaad hir housbonde cokewold, Swich folk shal have no power ne no grace To offren to my relikes in this place. [PardP, 377-84]

What he says is that only faithful wives can come forward, implying that those who do not are cuckolding their husbands, thus effectively blackmailing the wives in his audience to come forward and pay up. It is such a good trick that in the back of our minds some of us will have wondered why Chaucer did not put it to better effect, with such a one as the Wife of Bath among the fellowship, but of course we should not have. If I am correct, he did, but was obliged to discard it later. Within a context of the Pardoner attempting to put paid to the Wife of Bath, this is the natural handle for him to have compelled her to pay up. Though she is scandalously adulterous, in the spirit if not in the flesh, the Wife’s disclaimers are loud and clear in the Prologue that we are familiar with and doubtless were equally so in the earlier

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situation, which makes her an obvious mark for the Pardoner. In fact, as the sole “wyf” in the company she would have been put on the spot without any discernible route of escape. Thus what it all comes down to is that the original version of the Pardoner’s Tale may have been directed at bringing the Wife to heel by a sneaky sales ploy from which she was unable to disentangle herself. This would have happened at the conclusion of his tale, at the moment that he comes up with what we now distinguish as his “sample” offertory. Now this is not just a wild guess. It is something that is strongly suggested by the outcome of our forthcoming discussion of the Pardoner-Shipman link, which adduces further reason to assume that the original Pardoner’s Tale must have ended on very much such a note. Possibly, too, it was here that Lenvoy de Chaucer came in, though without its Griseld references. Its sardonic voice, so unsuited to the Clerk’s Tale, would have been quite appropriate here, as is the fashion in which it outlines her sins, which would have been a natural follow-up of a tale dealing with this subject. This has brought us very close to what I believe to have been the pre-challenge Pardoner’s Tale. Within the confines of the proposed quarrel, this results in an agreeable fitting of tales. The Wife’s old tale deals with a mercenary, adulterous and very Dame Alice-like wife and a clever cleric, the hypocritical and lecherous Daun John who uses a loan from her husband to seduce her into prostituting herself, the upshot being that – the money having been spent – the husband gets repaid by “taillynge”, payment in bed of what the Middle Ages referred to as the marriage debt but done here most meretriciously. Our reconstructed context for the initial Pardoner’s Tale comes up with very much the same themes. What if both were first written with this in mind and, with a variety of ironical shifts of emphasis, our adulterous and mercenary Wife of Bath was, in the end and in spite of her cautionary tale of unscrupulous clerics lying in wait to cash in on faithless females, most fittingly made to part with her money by a clever and equally mercenary hypocrite, and quite a lecher at that: Daun John the Pardoner? It is worth noting, in this context, that as many as 32 manuscripts read the Host’s initial address to the Pardoner not as “Thou beel ami, thou Pardoner” but “Thou beel ami, John Pardoner”.40 40

Hamilton: 53.

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The Evidence of the Pardoner-Shipman End-Link All this accords well with what we learn from the PardonerShipman endlink, a major piece of support for the above reading. This passage, found in as many as nineteen manuscripts, connects the Pardoner’s Tale and the Shipman’s Tale. Manly/Rickert have this:41 Nowe frendes saide oure oost so dere How lykith you by John the pardoner For he hath unbokeled wel the male He hath us told right a thrifty tale As touching of mysgovernaunce I pray to god yeve hym good chaunce As ye have herd of thise riotoures three Now gentil Maryner hertily I pray thee Telle us a good tale and that right anon Hit schal be done by god and by seint John Saide this Marynere as wel as ever I can And right anon his tale he bygan.

Here is the same John Pardoner again and his Tale is the same, too, “of thise riotoures three”, but there is not the slightest hint of any grievous clash between Pardoner and Host. The Host’s tone is jovial, as is his parting prayer that “god yeve hym [the Pardoner] good chaunce”. This and his remark that John the Pardoner “hath unbokeled wel the male” indicate a sermon that did not end in the familiar debâcle but resulted in an actually effected loosening of purse strings, in full conformity with the proposal that someone, the Wife of Bath presumably, was originally made or meant to be made to pay up. The problem here is of course the status of this link. It is no great writing, corrupt, not found in any of the major manuscripts like Ellesmere or Hengwrt and, since a transition from Pardoner to Shipman provides a most improbable sequence, regarded as spurious by all the modern editors.42 Thus, it does not seem to have much in its favour, which is obviously why in modern times it has been rejected as a scribal/editorial invention used to combine two tales in Chaucer’s style in the absence of some other appropriate link. It is also the evi41

Benson, p 1130 note 968; Manly/Rickert, vol. iv, pp 495-96. Robinson also gives this link (p 895) but, curiously, comes up with a much more corrupt version drawn from the Petworth MS. 42 Manly/Rickert, vol iv, pp 495-96; vol vii, p 110; Robinson, p 895; Benson, p 1130.

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dent reason why no modern editor has taken the trouble to adapt it to editorial interpunction and spelling conventions. Yet if this is so, why is it that it poses such a puzzle once we consent to linger on its contents and its composition? Let us start with some common sense. It is patently foolish to act as if Chaucer never wrote any mediocre or even bad verse for the Canterbury Tales, as Norman Blake would agree. There certainly are other links which are just as mechanical yet are uncritically accepted as being Chaucer’s. Stanza 1212a-g at the end of the Clerk’s Tale is an excellent case in point and much the same can be said for the officially approved Shipman’s end-link. Next, how is it possible for anyone with any notion of the contents of the Pardoner’s Tale to have come up with a link like this? The answer is that it is not. Neither the dullest-witted scribe nor the drowsiest editor could have invented something like this. The Pardoner’s fall is so monumental that it beggars belief that some deluded scribe or editor could have unflinchingly composed a link that so flagrantly denies this and suggests a jolly success for a jolly good fellow. It could be argued that the phrase “unbokeled wel the male” is used here in the fashion that we come across it in the Miller’s Prologue [3115], where is it used to mean that “the game is well bigonne”.43 This fails to work, however, for there it applies to the opening moves of the early Canterbury Tales, the place where the game did begin. Here the context of the link does not allow any such interpretation and plainly refers to the Pardoner’s own words on this point. That this is how things were also read in the early days is clear from the Sloane 1685 MS, British Library, which has a variant reading of “oure male”.44 The expression as such, while no doubt colloquial, is of good Chaucerian standing. A further and crucial puzzle is that, even though the link is invariably used to introduce the Shipman’s Tale, the internal evidence is that it was not originally written for this purpose. Its twelve lines, possibly adapted here and there by the scribes and equally possibly garbled in some places, are unlike the execrable inventions that we occasionally come across in manuscripts. In fact, their scansion is pleasantly if uninspiredly Chaucerian throughout, until it breaks down at lines 8 to 11, which are precisely those that introduce the Shipman: 43 44

Benson, p 66 note 3115. Manly/Rickert, vol vii, p 110.

180 | The Testament of Love Now gentil Maryner hertily45 I preye thee [8] Telle us a good tale and that right anon. [9] It schal be don by God and by seint John [10] Saide this Maryner as wel as ever I can. [11]

These lines are manifestly corrupt and the reason why is also manifest: they have been altered by the insertion of the Shipman here. At some time a scribe or editor replaced the originally announced narrator by the “gentil Maryner” with little consideration for their scansion. This is why line 8 is a mess. The word “Maryner” breaks up its metre, resulting in unnatural and crippled iambics, implying at the same time that the rest of the line is authentic. Replace it by something like “Sire” or “Dame” (and hence “thee” by “ye”) and the metre evens out most agreeably. Line 9 is a similar mess. “Telle us a myrie tale right anon” or something similar ought not to have been too difficult to come up with. The fact that it is not there in the first place implies, of course, that the original tale called for was not one of the merry ones, such as the Shipman’s, but a moral one: “Telle us a moral tale right anon”. Someone replaced “moral” (or an equivalent) by “good” and got into trouble with the rest of the line.46 Line 10 scans all right, but is clearly extraneous. The swearing looks as if it was lifted straight from the Pardoner (see WBP, 164) and is therefore suspect. The best guess is that it was inserted here as a replacement of an earlier line, in order to paint a traditionally illmouthed sailor. Line 11, another crippled line, offers us two options as to finding out who the original narrator was. If “Saide this…” was part of the original line, which is by no means certain, we can read this with somewhat curious stress on the final -e of “saide”. In this case the line requires a single (stressed) syllable in the place of the Maryner’s three, thus indicating that, if the rest of the line is authentic, the intended next speaker was one of those with a monosyllabic name or a 45

Manly/Rickert give “hertly” in vol iv, p 495 and “hertily” in vol vii, p 110. Robinson’s version has “hertely” (p 895). Benson’s glossary (p 1257) gives “hertly” as the adjectival form but this is not supported by the Middle English Dictionary, which makes no so such distinction. The final –y is an editorial modernization. 46 It could of course be argued that the Parson, in introducing his own profoundly moral Tale, uses myrie an exegetical synonym for moral. This, however, it is entirely dependent on its context there. Here nothing of the kind is involved and, anyway, a replacement of myrie is precisely the one thing that would have been absolutely superfluous, even if it were used in the Parson’s sense.

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bisyllabic one ending in optionally pronounced -e, such as Reeve, Cook, Wife, Clerk, Monk, Nun and Priest. The other option is to read the line with final -e elided in “saide thís”. On this basis, only names whose second syllable is or can be stressed may be inserted here: Merchant (Marchánt), Parson (Persoún) and, to be precise, Chaucer (Chaucér) are the sole ones to fit the bill. All these considerations show that the Pardoner-Shipman link as a scribal/editorial invention is simply not a viable notion. What we do have is scribal/editorial intervention in lines 8-11 of an already existing link written to introduce someone other than the Shipman. As the link is not merely found with the Pardoner but also very plainly refers back to him, the most logical conclusion is that it represents an original link for him that was discarded by Chaucer but preserved in his Nachlass and put to new use by some later editor. Other options do not work out, since none of them can account for its “happy” conclusion of the Pardoner’s preaching. This discarding is a thing that we may suppose to have happened when Chaucer altered the application of the Pardoner’s sermon and uncoupled the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale from the Wife of Bath. Thus, the inference here is that the link must basically be authentic Chaucer and originally written for the Pardoner, at an early stage of the development of his tale when, presumably, the cuckold ploy was still in force. It looks to all intents and purposes like one of what I would term his “stop-gap” links, brief provisional links that were temporarily inserted for the probable reason of establishing a narrative order. What we may suppose to have happened is that, though discarded, it was preserved among Chaucer’s papers and put to its present use by a scribe or editor in need of a suitable link. Its plain reference to the Pardoner and its verbal echoing of the Tale itself made it an obvious choice. Out of deference to Chaucer or simply because this person was a careless reader and overlooked how much its “unbuckling” differs from the actual ending or because he evidently was not much of an improviser anyway (or any combination of these options), he left the Pardoner’s part unaltered and solely adapted the lines needed to introduce the next narrator. Naturally, this situation must whet our curiosity. If I am right about this, the original Pardoner’s Tale was followed by a moral tale and the link’s scansion tells us, after elimination of the impossible, that this was told by either the Merchant, the Parson or Chaucer or,

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alternatively, the Clerk, the Prioress (Nonne) or the Monk. A brief parade past these six shows that there is not really much of a choice. The Merchant’s Tale is not a moral one, even if it is used to facilitate a moral debate. The Parson is not much of a choice, either. His present tale could never have been the one referred to and there are no convincing indications as to any present-day tale that he might have told before. Chaucer the pilgrim is another matter, of course. We already know him as the abortive narrator of Sir Thopas and recipient of one shifted tale (Melibee), so that it is not impossible for him to have been the provisional narrator of a further tale, in abeyance of a new place to be found for it. On this point we simply have no information to go by. Of the choices with optional -e, the Prioress (Nonne) can be rejected without too much of a problem. Her tale is concerned with entirely different matters than the ones at hand and she is too wellsuited to the one that she pronounces. The Clerk’s Tale is more interesting. It is certainly a moral one and much concerned with Testament of Love matters. It is also old enough to have been an early part of the Canterbury Tales. The problem is that it is not concerned with the Pardoner but with the Wife of Bath instead, as underlined by its Lenvoy de Chaucer. Our best option altogether is the Monk’s Tale. True, the Monk, as described in the General Prologue, is not a moral person, yet his Tale with its case histories of the downfall of important historical characters is eminently suited. When we consider how ultimately the Pardoner has a great fall among the pilgrims, it is tempting to think that this was somehow inspired by the Monk’s instances and that these originally constituted the tale to follow the former. They would certainly would have provided a good fit, with implicit moral reproof of the Pardoner’s pride, especially if Chaucer should have added some words in the concluding link on how this also applied to him. As it is, we do not have any such lines. Yet it is worth noting that both the Monk’s Tale itself and its links, the Prologue of the Monk’s Tale and its epilogue (usually known as the Prologue of The Nun’s Priest’s Tale) show good indications of successive rewriting efforts and tale shifting.47 Needless to say, these are activities that are also easily associated with the Testament of Love. The rewriting is particularly striking in the links, which reveal a Monk quite unlike the 47

Benson, pp 928, 935.

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one who figures in the General Prologue: despite the host’s attempt to tickle his sense of humour, this Monk is an austere and serious cleric and well-deserving of being qualified as moral. In the Canterbury Tales as we know them it seems clear that the links serve to adapt the teller to his Tale, which makes it a likely thought that his portrait in the General Prologue was due for revision – one of the many cases perhaps in which this was postponed until it was too late. However, what if all this should stem from the time of Chaucer’s old solution for the Pardoner when, in view of the 20-odd portraits that he had so far written for the General Prologue, there was no good choice of pilgrim for him to assign the countervoice to, unless he rethought the part of the Monk? Having done so, in the shape of links showing a moral Monk, he now had a tale that was well-suited to warn the high-and-mighty Pardoner of the vicissitudes of Fortune. It seems to me that this is also where the story of Croesus comes in, which has been noted as an appropriate ending but provides a bad fit with the tale’s Modern Instances, a later interpolation of recent victims of the turning of Fortune’s wheel. The “riche Cresus” provides an excellent peg on which to conjecture a moral conclusion about vanitas and the shortsightedness of trusting in the lures of transient life, especially money, the very sort of points that the Pardoner makes in his own tale but without any apparent self-reflection. Thus, it is an attractive supposition that the Modern Instances stem from the time when, in the process of coming up with his capsule Testament of Love, Chaucer was obliged to restructure both the Pardoner’s and Monk’s parts. Yet if this was the case he stayed close to the original situation. This is because here he hit upon the felicitous notion of turning the Pardoner into another one of the Monk’s case histories, as it were, which is the observable situation when the Pardoner is made to come to his fall. With the new message spelled out large and clear, however, the Monk’s Tale would have been quite superfluous and hence reassigned to a different place, together – presumably – with sufficient alterations in the links to make them fit their new context. In this connection, it may even be that the Pardoner’s transformation into a modern instance was itself the impetus that inspired Chaucer to flesh out the tale with the Modern Instances that we are familiar with.

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Further Suggestions of a Wife-Pardoner Quarrel While the chief outline of the Pardoner’s original retaliation thus shows itself to be quite gratifyingly tractable, what about other indications of the Wife-Pardoner quarrel? The major area where one seems to come across these is the matter of the Sins of the Tavern in the Pardoner’s sermon. As much a “quyter” as the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner is one who seeks to strike at his opponent’s weak points. Assuming that he has a specific person in mind, the obvious passage is the one dealing with the Sins of the Tavern. This is where he comes down quite heavily on Gluttony, Hazardry and Swearing. In terms of the quarrel Hazardry is chiefly window dressing, though important for the tale itself, which leaves us Gluttony and Swearing – two sins which are easily linked to the Wife of Bath. This leads us to an interesting refinement in our reconstruction of the genesis of the Pardoner’s Tale. As we shall find, the Sins of the Tavern are identifiable as late inclusions that we must associate with the Testament of Love by dint of their debt to St Jerome, Innocent III, John of Salisbury and the Parson’s Tale.48 This is something that we also deduce from their tripartite nature, which is directly bound up with the divisiones of the full sermon that they are part of and which, in this form, we assume therefore not to have been included until Testament of Love times. It is further and fundamentally borne out by the textual condition of the Tale. Its Flanders opening with its company of revellers is interrupted by the Pardoner’s triple exposition of sin, only to return to its natural story-line when this is finished. Its rough going has been remarked on by many scholars and has sometimes been characterized as shoddy work.49 It is undeniable that the Sins of the Tavern break up the tale’s narrative flow. So why do we not eliminate them and see what result we get? In Flaundres whilom was a compaignye Of yonge folk that haunteden folye, As riot, hasard, stywes, and tavernes, Where as with harpes, lutes, and gyternes, They daunce and pleyen at dees bothe day and nyght, 48

See Chapter Six, under Koeppel’s Evidence. Benson, p 909 note 661; Carleton Brown, The Pardoner’s Tale (1935; Oxford: OUP, 1970), p xvi; Gordon Hall Gerould, Chaucerian Essays (Princeton, N.J: Princeton UP, 1952), p 64.

49

The Testament of Love | 185 And eten also and drynken over hir myght. [ParsT, 463-68] Thise riotoures – thre – of whiche I telle,50 Long erst er prime rong of any belle, Were set hem in a taverne for to drynke…[ParsT, 661-63]

With some adapted interpunction (which is an editorial matter anyway), the story now moves smoothly. This offers another piece of confirmation that the Tavern Sins ought to be regarded as extraneous and later interpolations on Chaucer’s part. Markedly similar incursions are found in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, as we have noted above and shall discuss in greater detail in Chapter Five. Now if these Sins are late and to be associated with the Testament of Love yet also applicable to the Wife of Bath, this suggests that at the time of their insertion, which was plainly done with an eye to upgrading the Pardoner’s homiletics, Chaucer was still thinking and writing within the parameters of a Wife-Pardoner quarrel. This indicates that the Pardoner was first to be reconstituted and that the Wife followed later. Later, other considerations, probably related to Chaucer’s new solution for the Wife’s part and the Pardoner’s altered status, caused him to reconsider and throw out the quarrel altogether. Thus, when next we turn to the Wife, we find the Pardoner removed from the reach of the Wife’s anger in spite of all his provocation and assigned a more innocent role with respect to her. The old quarrel is no longer in force, which effectively indicates that the Wife’s rewriting must have followed upon that of the Pardoner. Though this makes things somewhat more intricate, it is nonetheless a welcome indication, as it sheds light on matters that would otherwise have remained obscure. The intricacy chiefly revolves around the consideration that if the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale were first redone with his quarrel with the Wife of Bath still in force, they must have been revised anew after having definitively been phased out by Chaucer’s rewriting of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. 50 Although they are well suited to the Tavern Sins, I have retained lines 465-68 for two reasons. One is that their use of riot provides a natural transition to the subsequent riotoures. The other is the evident need for some lines to have passed in order to enable Chaucer to return to the company at hand and resume his tale along the lines that we find here. For the rest, I believe that the simple emendation of putting thre between dashes in line 661 effectively solves the redactional problem of narrative (dis)continuity that has so often been remarked upon, though Chaucer could also have intended a subclause here: “[of ] thre of whiche I telle”.

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There are three Sins of the Tavern: hasardry, swearing and gluttony. In the version that we are familiar with gluttony has become a side-issue – for the Pardoner’s ultimate selection proves to be made on the basis of bad language. For this, there are just two natural candidates among the fellowship: the Host, who is a taverner himself, and the Wife of Bath. Though the Host – a gross and violent swearer throughout – is made the Pardoner’s dupe, the original and logical choice is the Wife of Bath, as she is the only one to have given him cause for wishing to “quyte” himself and the other truly great swearer among the entire fellowship to boot. “By God” says the Pardoner in line 457 when he expresses his hope that his tale shall be to the others’ liking. As we shall see elsewhere, the Pardoner’s infrequent swearing is fundamentally a matter of mimesis, as a way of insinuating what he means, something to which he refers as signs.51 The exception is “by seint John”, which is really a personal signature on the Pardoner’s part, John being a familiar nickname for pardoners and priests. “By God” happens to be one of the Wife of Bath’s favourites. It occurs six times in her Prologue, not counting its francophile version “pardee” or the almost identical “(as help) me God” and “(thonked) be God”. The oath most typical of her is “God (it) woot”, woot being one of the signature words for the Wife of Bath’s speech. It, too, crops up in the pages to come. But there is more. In Chaucer’s original conception, the Wife of Bath may have gone about cursing like a shipman – she still does – yet the essence of his censure ought to have been her sexual appetite, that characteristic blending of gluttony and lechery, within a general context of avarice.52 Thus what happens to the Host in the aftermath that we are all familiar with is not just a clever shifting of parts but a realignment of emphasis as well. What was a minor aspect of the Wife has become a major aspect of the Host. Allowing that the setting of the Tale “in Flaundres” may be a hint at her craft of “clooth-makynge”, of which “she hadde swich an haunt,/She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt”, we do come across several instances that are easy to read as signs directed at her appetite, such as the Pardoner’s description of the revellers:

51

The subject of signs is more extensively discussed in Chapter Seven. Evidence that Avarice, in the shape of marriage for gain, was a major, or possibly, the major element of the Wife’s original prologue is given in Chapter Five. 52

The Testament of Love | 187 …yonge folk that haunteden folye, As riot, hasard, stywes, and tavernes, Where as with harpes, lutes and gyternes, They daunce and pleyen at dees bothe day and nyght, And eten also and drynken over hir myght, Thurgh which they doon the devel sacrifise... And right anon thanne comen tombesteres Fetys and smale, and yonge frutesteres, Syngeres with harpes, baudes, wafereres, Whiche been the verray develes officeres To kyndle and blowe the fyr of lecherye, That is annexed unto glotonie. [PardT, 464-69, 477-82]

This brings to mind the Wife of Bath during her fourth marriage. Her husband was such a reveller and she herself as well: And I was yong and ful of ragerye, Stibourn and strong, and joly as a pye. How koude I daunce to an harpe smale, And synge, ywis, as any nyghtyngale, Whan I had dronke a draughte of sweete wyn! [WBP, 455-59]

And what do both the Wife and the Pardoner immediately add to this? And after wyn on Venus moste I thynke, For al so siker as cold engendreth hayl, A likerous mouth moste han a likerous tayl. [WBP, 464-66] The hooly writ take I to my witnesse That luxurie is in wyn and dronkenesse. [PardT, 483-84]

Even if this should not have been levelled at the Wife, since the passage was probably not included in her original Prologue, this is well applicable to her condition. Not much later the Pardoner adds that … woodnesse, yfallen in a shrewe, Persevereth lenger than doth dronkenesse. [PardT, 496-97].

While Chaucer’s “shrewe” is also applicable to men the remark makes good sense as a piece of nastiness directed at the Wife of Bath. So do his expressions of disgust at the “enemys of Cristes croys [whose] wombe is hir god”:

188 | The Testament of Love O wombe! O bely! O stynkyng cod, Fulfilled of dong and of corrupcioun! At either ende of thee foul is the soun. [PardT, 534-36]

The reference to womb and belly is ambiguous, pointing both to gluttony and lechery. Philippians 3:18-19, which the Pardoner quotes here, similarly names as Christ’s enemies those “whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame”, shame being a scriptural euphemism for the sexual organs. A further passage that is quite reminiscent of the Wife of Bath’s appetite and its consequences is his description of the drunkard, a subject freely delivered into the Pardoner’s hands by her opening remark to her confession: “As evere moote I drynken wyn or ale”. O dronke man, disfigured is thy face, Sour is thy breeth, foul artow to embrace, And thurgh thy dronke nose semeth the soun As though thou seydest ay “Sampsoun, Sampsoun!” And yet, God woot, Sampsoun drank nevere no wyn. Thou fallest as it were a styked swyn; Thy tonge is lost, and al thyn honeste cure; For dronkenesse is verray sepulture Of mannes wit and his discrecioun He kan no conseil keepe, it is no drede. [PardT, 551-61]

Of course the Pardoner prefers his signs to outspokenness and does not speak of any woman but sticks to the more general “dronke man”. Yet this does not serve to indicate gender, his “disfigured is thy face” agrees all too well with the Wife’s face “reed of hewe”, “his foul artow to embrace” not only suggests a woman but is eminently applicable to her fading looks, prefiguring her Loathly Lady manifestation. The loss of “tonge” and the demise of one’s wit and discretion fit the Wife’s autobiographical revelations admirably and the remark that a drunk “kan no conseil keepe” is a literal echo from her Midas anecdote that women “kan no conseil hyde”. This, as we have seen, looks like a foreign element in her tale and may have been part of what is now the Shipman’s Tale, which is much concerned with the notion of “conseil.” Above all, let us mark the Pardoner’s selective use of the Wife’s favourite expletive here and the fact that this is done in combination with a name that rhymes with hers: “God woot, Sampsoun nevere drank no wyn...” But Alisoun certainly did.

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Besides suggesting a drunkard’s snoring and rhyming with Alisoun, the name of Sampsoun is a keyword for the wickedness of women. “Who was stronger than Sampson, wyser than Salomon, holyer than David? And 3it thei were all overcomen by the queyntise and whiles of women” was a favourite pronouncement of the homilists.53 The story was also Jankyn’s second favourite, coming straight after Eve in his “book of wikked wyves”: Tho redde he me how Sampson loste his heres: Slepynge, his lemman kitte it with hir sheres; Thurgh which treson loste he bothe his yen. [WBP, 721-23]

When the Tale is finished and the Pardoner takes up the offertory, it is the wives who are asked to come forward. Reference to the Wife cannot fail to be indicated, since she is the only secular woman around: Cometh up, ye wyves, offreth of youre wolle! Youre names I entre heer in my rolle anon... [PardT, 910-11]

The “wolle” may well refer to the Wife’s “clooth-makyng” activities, the rest a knowing wink about his earlier remark on cuckolding when he says of these wives that, for a price, Into the blisse of hevene shul ye gon. [PardT, 912]

These final two points lead us back to our reconstruction of the original outcome of the Pardoner’s sermon, providing additional fuel for a reading that this was all about the Wife of Bath being put into her place in a characteristically underhand way. The exact conclusion of the original effort of course evades us, but I should not be at all surprised if it was followed by some words of reflection by the author. Keeping in mind that the Pardoner was not yet the ultimate villain that he was to become in Chaucer’s later version, we recognize that the full focus here is on the Wife of Bath, adulterous and avaricious in much the same way as is the Merchant of St Denis’s wife. The Pardoner may have compelled her to go down on her knees, kiss his relics and offer her groat, but this is purely a matter 53

Owst, Literature & Pulpit, p 384.

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of power play and would not have involved anything as laudable as contrition on the Wife’s part. Hence, a word on her true condition would have been very much to the point. As we have noted, we have such a passage in the shape of Lenvoy de Chaucer, whose sardonic comment is entirely in line with this, so why not assume that its verses originally belonged here? In direct support of this is the fact that it is not only a most unusual and extraneous second moralitas, but is introduced in almost the same words as the similarly unusual second moralitas of the Pardoner’s Tale, with which we have just associated it, thus implying a close conception and execution: But o word, lordynges, herkneth er I go… [ClT, 1163] But, sires, o word forgat I in my tale… [PardT, 919]

What argues against this picture is that Lenvoy demonstrably discusses the Wife in terms of the Seven Deadly Sins, as we shall see below, and this is something directly associated with the Testament of Love. Still, as its reassignation to the Clerk would have been directly related to Chaucer’s reconstructional efforts on the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner, this leaves ample room for Chaucer to have experimented with making it fit the Pardoner first before giving up on this. As there is good evidence that the rewriting of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale involved at least two stages, a genesis of the Envoy as part of the first stage is therefore an option worth considering. What remains to be discussed here is a matter of narrative order. Of course, it is clear that the Pardoner must have come after the Wife, but we do not know whether he did so straightaway or after the intervention of some other pilgrim or pilgrims. In the first few Canterbury tales quarrels are a matter of immediacy, as witness the Miller and the Reeve. Later, in particular association with the Wife of Bath, there are the Friar and the Summoner, whose quarrel is made to wait a tale or two before being consummated. Chaucer’s selection of the Wife and the Pardoner for his basic Testament of Love points at a close association. Yet we cannot be sure. The Marriage Debate, which is really a more sophisticated variation on the quarrels, shows that it is well possible for a tale or two to slip in without spoiling the discussion. One such is the tale of Custance, now told by the Man of Law. As we have seen, its mercantile stanzas strongly suggest that it may

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have been assigned originally to the Merchant. This is further supported by the consideration that the Wife of Bath’s old tale, the Merchant of St Denis, manifestly strikes at the Merchant’s profession, so that a reaction from his direction would have been a most natural thing to expect. Even the present-day Canterbury Tales evince a close relation between the Wife of Bath and what the Merchant has to say about women of her kind, particularly in the headlink to his present Tale. To this we may add that the Tale itself is in no way tailored to its teller, which makes it well worth considering as one more instance of the tale shifts that were set into motion by the Testament of Love. While this is a scenario that I am inclined to favour, it does not exhaust our possibilities. The Clerk’s Tale, in particular, would also have been an appropriate remedial tale – and one that we assume to have been written well before the Canterbury effort – and Lenvoy de Chaucer, even if it is a later interpolation, bears this out. How the Prologues and Tales Acquired Their Final Form Having reconstructed the major outlines of the initial Wife of Bath-Pardoner situation, adorned with lesser indications, let us try and see what happened to them to result in the radical changes that Chaucer put into effect. The prime mover for all this was, as I argue, Gower’s challenge. This put everything that Chaucer was busily engaged on in a state of flux. After or during a temporizing phase associated with his work on the Legend of Good Women and the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, Chaucer had a true inspiration: the Wife of Bath as his answer to Gower’s Lover and Venus combined, the Pardoner as a caricature of the Priest. Both were to come up with a sermon incorporating all the Deadly Sins, in plain reference to the way that the Confessio Amantis was structured. As a key to the discriminating listener/reader and perhaps as insurance against the accusation that the tales tended to “sownen into synne”, there was to be a further piece, the Parson’s Tale, combining Pennaforte’s manual of confession (Summa de poenitentia) and a condensation and rearrangement of Peraldus’s treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins (Summa vitiorum), with a good deal of material from other sources, along lines similar to the Confessio. In this context, the Parson evidently serves as a reflection of the Christian side of Gower’s Priest. The Retraction completed this effort, by turning everything into a formal testament.

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As I have said before, where Chaucer went to work first is guesswork. Echoes from the Parson’s Tale in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and the Pardoner’s Tale indicate that the Parson was first. The real question is who came next. The Wife of Bath’s original marital self-exposure may have suggested itself, but the obvious choice was the Pardoner, who presumably already told the rioters’ tale in the original situation as part of a loosely-structured sermon.54 His textual debt to the Parson is the greater one, too, which cannot fail to be significant. Chaucer now outfitted the Pardoner’s Tale with the Sins of the Tavern, thus managing to complement the deadly sins already present and arrive at the desired total of Seven.55 The result was what we know as his sample sermon, which is a sermon in its own right and probably is so because it was provisionally meant to be the Pardoner’s part of his answer to Gower. At this point, Chaucer’s idea is likely to have been a scenario whereby the Pardoner’s sermon was meant to serve as a confessional instrument for expounding the various sins in the Wife of Bath’s confession. In all likelihood, Chaucer’s first effectuation of a confession of sin was tried out on the Wife of Bath. As we have seen, there are good indications that there was a relatively substantial Prologue to begin with, covering some 200 lines, largely dealing with a boastful confession of her avarice and how she exploited an old husband for all that he was worth. Chaucer now hugely expanded the Prologue. He probably took his theme from Gower and mixed it with elements taken from Innocent’s De miseria and Jovinian’s arguments in St Jerome’s Epistola. The next 160-odd lines also reflect Gower’s Confessio Amantis, this time its prologus, half of which similarly deals with a biblical theme (Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream) and the author’s attempt, not unlike the Wife’s, to apply its subject matter to contemporary issues. Even more telling perhaps is the fact that, together with the Man of Law’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s words are among the most heavily glossed ones in the Canterbury Tales. Although we cannot be sure that these glosses can be attributed to Chaucer’s redaction, they do call to mind most forcefully the way in which Gower encadred the 54 We deduce this not only from the Pardoner-Shipman endlink but also from the fact that a second moralitas was added to the tale’s original one, a phenomenon that we also find at the conclusion of the Clerk’s Tale where it is introduced in almost the same words (Carleton Brown, The Pardoner’s Tale, p xxxv). 55 This is discussed in Chapter Eight.

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Confessio with Latin sidenotes as well as headings, and suggest a good way of accounting for their presence here. All of these lines were prefixed by Chaucer to the old beginning, thus ineffectuating the Host’s original invitation to the Wife and her acceptance. The latter two he fused with the old passage where Pardoner and Wife clashed and which was now brought for-ward to line 163. The confession was turned into a tripartite dilatio and expanded, among other things, with the Venerean references, a quintet of husbands and an extensive catalogue of sins, both great and small.56 He also – and this is an unusually thorough step for him to have taken, indicating how important his efforts on the Wife were – appears to have adapted her portrait in the General Prologue to the new situation, as is shown by its textual echoes from the Parson’s Tale. Not surprisingly, he did the same for the Parson. On the other hand, the bad fit of the Pardoner’s admission in his Prologue to a liking for a wench in every town rather clashes with his portrait in the General Prologue, where he is deemed a gelding or a mare, so that we may assume it to be the original one, on which no new work was done. Furthermore, though Chaucer partly preserved the original clash with the Pardoner, which enabled him to move on to the next sermon element, he added a new ending to the Wife’s Prologue. Here the Friar and the Summoner took over the original quarrel, which enabled him to shift this away to another place altogether. He replaced the Wife’s old tale by his own version of Gower’s tale of Florent, which removed another major link with the Pardoner, even if he seems to have preserved several passages belonging to the old situation. The structurally important thing to note here, in anticipation of further discussion to come, is Chaucer’s development of the Wife’s Prologue into a kaleidoscopic confession of blatant sinfulness and its clever fusion with the homiletic requirements of her sermon. Having tested the effectiveness of this sermon scheme and its incorporated confession, Chaucer seems to have been well satisfied with the result and decided to use the same device on the Pardoner. Consequently, he, too, was given an extensive confession to pronounce, which at the same time was made to serve as part of a new, overall sermon structure.57 This new combination, however, effectively eliminated the Pardoner as a confessor. It had made him much more perfidious than 56 57

For the sins, see Chapter Five. See Chapter Eight, The Pardoner’s Double Sermon.

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before, so that perforce the outcome of his simoniacal preaching was amended to its present shape. Another consideration is that, with the sample sermon integrated in a full-blown and formal sermon, the application of sermon rules to the Pardoner’s Tale required that sentence should be passed on him rather than licence given, as in the original situation, for such a glib rogue to get away with his knavery without undergoing some sort of retribution. Either way, this resulted in the affixation of a second moralitas, effected in much the same way as that of the Clerk’s Tale. A final aspect involved here is that the Pardoner’s entire preaching effort is, on some level, readable as a condemnation of a perceived want of spirituality that governs the Confessio Amantis. This is seen not only in his performance as a false Priest to the Canterbury fellowship in their role as lovers en route to their union with Christ’s charitas but particularly in the import of his harrowing tale. Though one wishes that matters were simpler and more clearcut, the convolutions of this complicated reconstruction are largely corroborated by what we shall find in the chapters to come. The evidence suggests that, rather than moving in a straight line from one tale to the other, Chaucer worked on them more or less conjointly, switching back and forth whenever this was needed. Ironically – and one wonders if Chaucer foresaw this at all – the result of this reworking and restructuring of the Wife’s and Pardoner’s parts along closely parallel lines was that the old quarrel that linked them together was written out of existence and made it necessary to set up another pilgrim altogether as the Pardoner’s dupe. The Provenance of the Wife of Bath’s New Tale One theoretically viable avenue of finding out what sort of changes Chaucer effected in his original material and why is to compare his sources and the end result. In the case of the Pardoner’s Tale this fails to work, for the simple reason that source and analogue research has failed to come up with its direct source. Matters are different, though, when we turn to the Wife of Bath. It is a well-known fact that Gower’s tale of Florent and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale are close and contemporary literary variants of one and the same folktale. As such they represent a major indicator of Chaucer’s debt to Gower. The Gower connection, however, has always been made light of. Even the observable fact that the authors use virtually the same tale in the

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same function of sermon exemplum and for the same purpose of illustrating the same virtue of submission in love, which ought to be an eye-opener, has generally been swept aside by hairsplitting argument. Gower’s tale is supposed to be about obedience,58 whereas Chaucer’s deals with maistrie. This is not truly tenable, of course, for the distinction is merely one of perspective, whereby the preacher’s demand of maistrie stands for the same thing as the other party’s obedience. When one further considers that the two tales are incontrovertibly one another’s closest analogues in place, time and substance, it really seems rather perverse to deny Chaucer’s debt to Gower. Surely we must allow him to have read the Confessio Amantis or at least heard it read, to judge by his reaction to Gower’s 1390 “accolade” and all the other evidence for my theory, and to have used the tale of Florent for his own purposes. Recent developments indicate some willingness to allow that Chaucer knew the tale.59 For all this, there has so far been a persistent refusal to accept it as his model for the Wife of Bath’s Tale. What is it, then, besides an anti-Gower bias, that has kept and keeps Chaucer criticism from admitting the obvious? There are two stumbling blocks. One is that there are no textual echoes to link them. This is not quite true, as there are some interesting ones in the hag’s sermon on gentilesse, but they link up with a different part of the Confessio. The other is the claim that the differences between the two are such that Chaucer cannot be thought to have been borrowing directly from Gower.60 This does not really mean much either, upon closer inspection. A likely explanation for the scarcity of textual correspondences is to accept that it was Chaucer’s wont to draw from memory or perhaps notes, possibly because he had no copy of the Confessio to consult. An alternative option that we have noted is that he never read the book but only heard it read out. A

58

Robinson, p 703. Benson, pp 872-73. 60 This view is well-expressed by Barlett J. Whiting, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ in: Sources & Analogues: 223-68, at 224. “Clearly enough the English poems have a common ancestor but their relation to that ancestor is by no means clear nor, for that matter, is their relation to one another. Chaucer’s version and Gower’s agree in certain marked points as against the other two [the Marriage of Gawain and the Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell], but they differ too much in other respects to make it possible to speak of a common source”. 59

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final possibility is that, in some cases at least, he was simply unwilling to defer to Gower and the ideas for which he stood. All of these choices link up well with the fact that other places where Gower’s influence is indicated or even uncontested show a similar scarcity of textual echoes. The recent reassessment of Chaucer’s debt to Gower in the case of the Man of Law’s Tale shows in which direction we ought to look. It is not just textual correspondences that count. There is a world of argument applicable in which shared passages, shared omissions and additions, and, particularly, a shared reduction of the plot – as well as a consideration of the authors’ narrative aims – play a major part. The other objection, of differences being too great, requires a more extensive discussion, involving the subject of source and analogue studies. In the case of the Wife of Bath’s Tale such studies represent a fascinating field and yet one that suffers – or has at least suffered – from curious practices. One of these is the frequently encountered proposal of hypothetical intermediary versions in order to account for differences between analogues. In our case, one gets the impression that such a hypothetical tale is actually preferred to the possibility of a Gowerian derivation. Another is that theme shifts and motif changes within folktales are, by unspoken consent, assumed to be the outcome of involuntary processes. Now this may be proper procedure as long as we are talking about orally and anonymously transmitted tales. As soon as tales enter upon the literary scene, however, things change and the old rules no longer apply. Thus, if Gower and Chaucer had been simple, faceless and nonliterary transmitters of the Loathly Lady folktale, without any great intervention on their parts, it might be tempting to accept that major differences between them can be accounted for by assuming separate sources. The alternative of a common source which each of them worked out differently does not stand up to careful inspection, since evidently the proposal of a such a source to account for major differences is a rather self-contradictory exercise. The point, however, is that they were both poets writing for a court audience and it is thus entirely within reason to attribute the differences that distinguish their tales to precisely this. Basically, Gower is not likely to have effected many changes in his original for its use as an exemplum on Obedience. The submission motif is typical of the folktale type in question and the structure of the

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Confessio Amantis essentially imposes no special adaptational requirements on the tale, save that of brevity, the more so as Gower is not greatly interested in applying his tales thematically and is at times content to draw the desired moral from a marginal aspect. Chaucer, however, while using the tale for a like purpose, introduced an entirely new dimension when he chose to apply it to a particular person, the Wife of Bath, her philosophy, her preaching, her bedroom objective and her ultimate self-condemnation. This meant that he had to tailor the Loathly Lady tale to serve a number of very specific ends. It should come as no surprise therefore that in doing so he ranged well beyond the original tale. Once we concede this, there remains little reason to dismiss the notion of Gower’s tale having been Chaucer’s model. The sensible view is provided here by Fisher who points out – and it seems difficult to improve on this – that comparisons have led to the conclusion that Chaucer’s version is independent of Gower’s Tale of Florent. But if he knew Gower’s tale of Constance from Book II of the Confessio, it is hard to imagine that Chaucer did not know Florent from Book I. Furthermore, the differences in his version are best explained as conscious alterations designed to improve the pace and structure of the story and to adapt it to the new conception of the Wife of Bath. None of the differences can be explained by reference to different sources, and Chaucer’s and Gower’s versions are, in spite of their variation, far more similar than any of the ballad and romance analogues.61

Sensible also is Peter Beidler: the “differences can best be explained not by saying that one teller is better than the other, but by saying that two fine poets had quite different purposes in composing their tales”.62 Ideally, Nicholson’s reappraisal of Gower’s Custance and the Man of Law’s Tale shows how to deal with a situation like this. The problem, however, is that Nicholson also had access to Trevet’s version, the immediate original (or something close to this) from which Chaucer and Gower are thought to have worked. In the case of the Wife of Bath and the tale of Florent there is no such direct analogue, so that it is impossible for us to apply Nicholson’s approach here. What we can do, however, is try and identify the major instances in 61

Fisher, p 296. Peter G. Beidler, ‘Transformations in Gower’s Tale of Florent and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale’ in Yeager: 100-14, at 101. 62

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which the Wife of Bath’s Tale diverges from the tale of Florent and determine the reasons for this. The Differences Between the Wife of Bath’s Tale and Florent In an earlier place we excluded the Wife’s diatribe against friars and her account of Midas as extraneous inclusions by Chaucer. The chief remaining points of difference are: 1. the faerie setting [WBT, 857-882, 989-996] 2. the Arthurian element [WBT, 857, 882, 890, 1089] 3. the courtly love element [WBT, 894-912, 1023-1045, 1228-1235] 4. the knight’s namelessness 5. the rape vs the slaying of Branchus [WBT, 885-88] 6. the judgement by Arthur’s queen vs that by Branchus’ grand-dame [WBT, 1023-45] 7. the list of women’s desires [WBT, 919-950] 8. the altered sequence of the knight’s movements 9. the hag’s reduced repellence [WBT, 997-99] 10. the discourse on gentilesse [WBT, 1106-1218] 11. the altered riddle and the knight's choice [WBT, 1219-35] 12. the unenchanted nature of the hag 13. the coda [WBT, 1257-64].63 At a glance, all of these are very much bound up with the Wife of Bath and largely literary additions. Most of them are important to her theme of maistrie, with which we deal extensively in Chapter Seven. Thus the Arthurian setting prepares the audience for the theme of submission to women, the lady’s service which is so characteristic of courtly love. And courtly love in its turn spells Arthur. The faerie touch is there to suggest magic and wonder, in special contrast to the wandering friar who is depicted as a leering but impotent sexual predator. This is part of the Wife’s little clash with the Friar and as such

63 A similar list of differences is found in Beidler: 100-14. While our accentuation of various aspects is different, we share a conviction that the differences between Gower and Chaucer are fundamentally a matter of authorial intervention.

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recognizably extraneous in its origin.64 The recurrence of the faerie motif later in the Tale, when knight meets hag, is essentially about the same thing – magic, wonder and the service of women – but also serves to introduce an interpretational signal on the subject of temporal evanescence. Paradoxically, the courtly love element is arguably derived from Gower. While there is little such love to be found in Florent it should nevertheless be remembered how prominently it figures in the general make-up of the Confessio. The linking element is probably gentilesse, a term that is used once or twice in the tale of Florent and easily allows itself to be associated with courtly love. The idea that the Arthurian setting may have been present in Chaucer’s source, as David Hartwell takes for granted, is doubtful. True, three of the six known analogues, including the Wife of Bath’s Tale, look Arthurian. Hartwell, in leaving out King Henry and The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter, slants matters even more in favour of this. Yet in the Wife’s case we learn that its Arthurian nature is solely dependent on four bare references in the Tale. Inspection learns that this is entirely too meagre and indicates that the Arthurian element was superimposed on the story.65 This is confirmed by Gower’s tale, which is not at all concerned with Arthur. His hero is “nephew to the Emperor”, which reminds us of the continent and the Gesta Romanorum. Who this Emperor is we never find out, but he is certainly not Arthur Then, the Arthurian element recurs in the Weddynge of Sir Gawen and in the ballad known as the Marriage of Gawain, but this proves little. As we shall find, the Weddynge is imitative of Chaucer, thus indicating that the entire Arthurian element may ultimately lie with Chaucer as its inventor. There remains the Marriage of Gawain, but, as William Entwhistle points out,66 medieval ballads tend to draw upon literary models and are hardly the folk product that they are often taken for, so that it is a much likelier scenario for the ballad to be based upon the Weddynge or some analogue than otherwise. 64 The faerie element is basically there to set the Arthurian/courtly love elements going and was cleverly inserted into the Tale by way of the Wife’s little revenge on the Friar. Yet to some they are evidence of a Celtic origin, well in keeping with Eisner’s ideas (on whom, see later). Cf Robert Dudley French, A Chaucer Handbook (1927; New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955), p 278ff. 65 WBT, lines 857, 882, 890, 1089. It is worth noting that neither Arthur nor the Arthurian setting is in any way instrumental to the story’s plot. 66 William J. Entwhistle, European Balladry (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939), passim.

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A different matter altogether is the nameless knight. As such he naturally links up with the “marriage advertisement” that the sense of the Wife of Bath’s theme comes down to. The knight is a stand-in for potential but unspecified husband Number Six. He is “Everyhusband” and, as there is still room for applicants, his name consequently remains a blank. Yet anyone familiar with folk literature will at the same time recognize that its heroes are frequently anonymous in the very same way that the knight is. They are designated as “Brave Little Tailor”, “Girl Without Hands” or “Miller’s Son”. Even when they are given names these frequently turn out to be descriptive of a particular trait or characteristic attribute rather than proper names: Cinderella [Cinders Girl], Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White. It is tempting, therefore, to read the anonymity of Chaucer’s knight as an indication of a greater faithfulness to the tale’s folk origin, yet this is somewhat contradicted by the fact that Gower’s Florent (Lat. florens: flowering, blooming) also comes close to folktale naming.67 In terms of female maistrie the rape motif stands for Original Sin. It is anathema to the Wife’s notion of a husband’s submission. It is male violation of a woman’s will and body, without the sanction of marriage. Woman is the one who should exert “the power durynge al [her] lyf/Upon his propre body, and noght he”. The motif functions as a counterpoint to the actual submission passage when the knight foregoes the choice which the hag has set him, and leaves the decision to her.68 Rape is not a common motif in folktales, which tend to tone down such sexuality to sharing the same bed during the night.69 It

67

It is also very curiously echoed in the antagonist’s name in the Weddynge, Sir Gromer Somer Joure. Evidently, its author saw something of a nature myth in the tale, with Summer’s Day (Somer Joure, which somewhat paraphrases Florent
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could have come from any of a great many sources, as Benson notes.70 Among other things, it is a familiar feature in folk ballads and figures as such in The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter, which is related to the Loathly Lady tradition.71 Its presence in the Wife of Bath’s Tale is best explained by assuming that Chaucer, being in need of something that could serve as Deadly Sin in the Wife’s canon, either invented the motif himself or was mindful of some familiar source, such as the ballad tradition. If the ballad existed at the time, which is guesswork, the notion would be welcome, as it also partly conforms to Chaucer’s sequence of the Loathly Lady accompanying the knight to his judgement. The correspondence is a tenuous one, all the same, as the ballad’s lady who follows the knight to court, there to exact her pound of flesh, is not the horrible hag but the poor raped maiden. The terminology that Chaucer uses in describing the rape may have been taken from the Parson’s discussion of such matters, though the textual echo is none too forceful: Of which mayde anon, maugree hir heed, By verray force, he rafte hire maydenhed. [WBT, 887-88] Another synne of Lecherie is to bireve a mayden of hir maydenhede. [ParsT, 868]

What I suspect is that, whatever its source may have been, the rape theme is meant on one level as deliberate signal on Chaucer’s part that his rejection of Gower’s “abhomynable” treatment of rape and incest Eisner’s Tale of Wonder, that “the motif of rape is absent in the analogues and medieval stories about rape seem far away from Chaucer’s story as far as the explanation of rape as a motivation for the riddle goes”. In spite of this, several scholars have pleaded in favour of rape as a retained motif: Roger Sherman Loomis, Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), p 502; Gerould, Chaucerian Essays; Kemp Malone, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, MLR 58 (1962): 481-91; Sigmund Eisner, A Tale of Wonder: A Source Study of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” (Wexford, Ireland: English, 1957). 70 Benson, pp 872-73. 71 Originals and Analogues of Some of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (London: Chaucer Society, 1872-87), p 483ff; Sources & Analogues: 207-266. The ballad’s incidents are easily reminiscent of the Loathly Lady folktale, but the lady herself has been replaced by a shepherd girl who turns out be “the king of France’s auld dochter”. For the ballad, see Albert E. Friedman ed. The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking Word (New York: Viking, 1956), pp 150-54.

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is still in force. This was one of the inferences to be drawn from his use of the tale of Custance and is likely to hold good here as well. Judgement by the Queen similarly makes the Wife’s reiterated point that it is women who should have the ultimate say in love and marriage. Arthur has seen the light. Gower’s tale, on the other hand, figures a killing and the holding of Florent as a hostage – useless motifs as far as the Wife of Bath’s Tale is concerned. Arthur’s Queen sitting in judgement is something that we recognize as possibly having been suggested by the courtly love setting of the Confessio Amantis, though once again there is no comparable courtly passage to be found in the tale of Florent.72 The “grantdame” of the slain Branchus, “the slyheste/Of alle that men knewe tho” is the one who proposes the deadly riddle. Folktale fanciers would expect her to be revealed later as the Loathly Lady but on this point they are sadly deceived. The same thing of course holds good for Chaucer’s raped maiden and the Loathly Lady, who in a truly cohesive plot ought to be one and the same person. That Chaucer foregoes this option need not surprise us, as it is the Wife of Bath – not exactly a maidenly figure any longer – who is so obviously the hag’s alter ego. There are, to be precise, two court sessions whereby the Queen sits in judgement – one serving to set the quest into motion, the other to resolve it. In Gower’s version the latter takes place before the knight, as a conscientious person, goes back to fetch the hag. This can hardly reflect any folktale source. Chaucer’s solution is both traditional and realistic (people tend to be forgetful, particularly in this type of folktale),73 while efficient as well: the hag accompanies the knight to his judgement. No quaint analogue need be dragged in to explain this. Let us just allow that Chaucer knew his craft and his folktales. The extensive list of women’s desires that the knight comes across during his wanderings are all typical of the Wife of Bath, a sublime summing up of her preferences as we have come to know 72

The courtly love element here has been noted by others (Robinson, p 703, note 1028; Loomis, p 502; G.R. Coffman, ‘Chaucer and Courtly Love Once More: The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, Spec 20 (1945): 43-50; et al. The obvious source to have suggested the courtly love element, in the light of the Chaucer-Gower literary duel, is of course the Confessio Amantis with its explicit courtly love theme. Rather remarkably, W.G. Dodd’s study, Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower, fails to discuss this with respect to the Wife of Bath. 73 The hero(ine) is frequently unwilling, or forgetful of the promise and must be admonished before submitting to the unpleasant task.

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them in the course of her Prologue, and plainly point back to the antifeminist models upon which they are based. There is no chance that they are of a folktale origin, nor do we find anything of the kind in Gower. They do crop up in the Weddynge of Sir Gawen but there they are, as we shall see, plainly traceable to Chaucer’s version. It has been pointed out by Derek Pearsall that Chaucer’s treatment of the hag’s loathsome appearance does not come up to Gower’s standard. “One ingredient, for instance, that any novice would have recognised the need for, is a loathsome description of the loathsome hag, so that Florent’s dilemma can be appreciated. This Gower provides, though not Chaucer (or rather, not the Wife of Bath)”.74 Since Chaucer is no novice and a great one for telling a tale dramatically, his failure to uglify the lady must plainly be related to her different role. The reason will become clear when we come to the sense of her tale, on whose level the hag functions as a persona of the Wife herself. It is useful for her to be shown as old and ugly here, for this creates a welcome contrast with the denouement of her tale, but not so old and so ugly that her self-advertisement risks being turned into a deterrent. What we should also recognize, however, is that, in spite of Pearsall, Gower’s own Loathly Lady is a far cry from her other manifestations, such as her later equivalent in the Weddynge, who is a truly abhorrent creature. Possibly, she is a memory of an original function as a gruesome death goddess, but it is more likely that she purely represents a later embellishment.75 The figure of the Loathly Lady appears to have inspired the narrators of her tale, both on the Continent and in Britain, to open the registers of their imagination and vie with one another for the most abhorrent description that they could come up with. The discussion of gentilesse, too, is one of Chaucer’s evident inclusions, since it is thematically absent from the tale of Florent. Yet, interestingly, as Fisher points out, Gower’s tale does refer to this concept a number of times, thus raising the likelihood that this suggested the notion of the gentilesse speech to Chaucer.76 While this seems a perfect inspirational point of departure, there is a good chance that Chaucer is further indebted to the Priest’s discussion of the subject in Book IV of the Confessio Amantis. This passage is very reminiscent of what Chaucer has to say. True, once again there are just a few verbal 74

Derek Pearsall, ‘Gower’s Narrative Art’, PMLA 81 (1966): 475-484, at 484. Hartwell, pp 9-10. 76 Fisher, pp 295-96, 298. 75

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correspondences to support the idea, but this ought to be a familiar aspect by now. What is also true here is that Chaucer seems to subtly but resoundingly correct Gower’s reasoning as not worth the “paper” on which it is written. I am unsure how to place this in terms of the Wife’s sermon. Defying rubrication as letter, sense or sentence, it looks like a little internal joke spelling out that the knight’s spiritual predicament is really Gower’s own, and may well be bound up with their literary duel. What we should definitely note is that it repeats in its own implicit fashion the Gower-oriented criticism which we also came across in the General Prologue. The arguments used by Gower and Chaucer are very similar, which in itself is not surprising as they are a familiar fourteenthcentury theme.77 Gentilesse, says Gower, cannot be “the fortune of richesse/Which of long time is falle in age” and Chaucer agrees. Gentilesse is not “descended out of old richesse”. Nor is it hereditary, they argue, Gower pointing out that, as all men are descended from Adam and Eve, everybody would by rights be gentle78 and Chaucer, while eschewing this politically tainted theme here, remarking that we “often fynde/A lordes sone do shame and vileynye”, a remark that would have served well for Henry of Derby and his fellow-Appellants. Gower defines real gentilesse as true “vertu set in the corage”. Alternatively phrased, the person who is ruled by … the condicion Of resonable entencion [disposition], The which out of the Soule groweth And the vertu fro vice knoweth [...] That is a verrai gentil man. [ConfAm, Book IV, 2269-75]

Reason, in Gower, stands for the opposite of kinde. Reason approximates God’s law, kinde the law of our natural impulses. All the 77

For gentilesse as a familiar 14th-century topic, cf Robinson, p 704 note 1109ff. Owst, Literature, pp 290-314; Malone: 481-91. Also see the Parson’s Tale on Thraldom [752-76], discussed in Chapter Eight, pp 396-98. On the implications of the Wife’s discussion of gentilesse, cf Donald C. Baker, ‘Chaucer’s Clerk and the Wife of Bath on the Subject of Gentilesse’, SP 59 (1962): 631-640. 78 This appears to link up directly with Wat Tyler’s rallying slogan and the disastrous events of the Peasants’ Revolt, which can hardly have been a favourite topic in the circles of Richard II’s court. Gower’s use of the egalitarian argument is curious in the light of his outspoken abhorrence of the Revolt in the pages of his Vox clamantis.

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same, this is a rather insipid gentilesse: a willingness to be good and to discriminate between good and evil. Was not the latter what Satan promised to Adam and Eve if they ate from the Tree? Actually, what is described here is profane gentilesse, noblesse of conduct for everyday use, even if it springs from a spiritual source. It is the same sort of gentilesse that we come across in the Franklin’s case. Now this is where Gower gets deservedly reproved. The echoes (entencion/entendeth, a verrai gentil man/the grettest gentil man) make clear that we are not just dealing with some spurious correspondence. They indicate that Chaucer’s general deafness to Gower’s way of phrasing things may be deliberate, after all. Here, all of a sudden, he turns out to be well capable of remembering what Gower says and coming down against it. The gentilesse that Gower proposes is too passive and too courtly by far. Instead, it is a gift coming “fro God allone” and is characterized by an active disposition to be good, so that ... who that is moost vertuous alway, Pryvee and apert, and moost entendeth [strives] ay To do the gentil dedes that he kan: Take hym for the grettest gentil man. [WBT, 1113-16]

Gower’s “entencion” (disposition) is succinctly deflated here by Chaucer’s “entendeth” (strives). Also, with the possibility of Gower as the Sergeant in mind, we may note that as a jab against his moral exterior and his less moral practices, the “privee and apert” remark strikes home most effectively. A further interesting point is that both Gower and Chaucer end their treatment of gentilesse by switching to poverty, which again indicates that we are not dealing with any accidental correspondences here. Gower ends upon the wry note that, in spite of what he has just been saying, money will trump virtue at any time in matters of love: ... 3it nou aday, In loves court to taken hiede, The povere vertu schal noght spiede, Wher that the riche vice woweth; For sielde it is that love alloweth The gentil man withoute good, Thogh his condicion be good. [ConfAm, Book IV, 2278-84]

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When we take a good look at Gower’s words we see that he is not really talking about any ideal court of love at all, let alone that of Christ’s spiritual love, but simply the contemporary court scene, instead. His words imply that without a bit of money to fall back upon it is hardly worth being gentil in the sense that he has just described with respect to acquiring any lady’s favour. It is a buyer’s market. All this sounds like the story of his life and it is impossible to come away from these lines without a sense of having just encountered someone congratulating himself on not being in any straits of “povere vertu”. It is worth noting that a recent critical article by the hand of Nicola F. McDonald has come up with almost exactly the same point on Gower’s discussion of courtly love.79 She observes, even if this is with respect to Book V of the Confessio and not Book IV, which is the one that we are discussing, that “sex and money are treated as virtually interchangeable […], not only in Genius’ discourse and tales but also in Amans’ confessions, as a woman’s love or the woman herself is treated as a treasure or an object that one might give or gain”. The words spoken by Chaucer’s hag are a sound correction of this. She sweeps away Gower’s implicit anti-poverty argument as rubbish by pointing out that the highest court of all, Heaven, is ruled by Christ who “in wilful poverte chees to lyve his lyf”. Also, he who has nothing and covets nothing is rich indeed, which is a good protection against thieves as well (a lovely piece of Chaucerian absurdism within its context and a plain indication as to how these words are to be taken, as it is Juvenal’s Satires which is cited here).80 Poverty is “a gret amendere eek of sapience” and, particularly, makes a man “his God and eek hymself to knowe” and realise that it “a spectacle is, as thynketh me,/ Thurgh which [a man] may his verray freendes see”. It is hard not to read this as reproof of Gower and the superficialities of his philosophy. In point of fact, though this is entirely speculative, the strong hint here at avarice appears to strike at our great acquirer of properties while the rest of the text paints someone in permanent fear of being robbed and, among other things, seems directed at his diminishing eye-sight (Gower actually went blind in his old age) and, 79 This is from Peter Nicholson’s review in JGN xxiv, no.2 (2005) of Nicola F. McDonald’s ‘Lusti Tresor’: Avarice and the Economics of the Erotic in Gower’s Confessio Amantis” in: Treasure in the Medieval West. Ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler. York: York Medieval P, 2000. 80 Benson, p 874, note 1193-94.

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somewhat more nastily, at what may have been his waning sense of discrimination.81 What argues in favour of such speculation is that it fully accords with all that we have come across so far. It links up faultlessly with the way in which the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale deals with Gower. The technique involved, tackling him through a mouthpiece, is identical. In fact, reading matters along these lines enables us to discern the faint outlines of a second reaction to Gower’s challenge. Here, at the heart of what we can only define as the core tale of the Testament of Love, Gower’s ghost crops up again, only to be cut down to size in the mildest of manners. All the same, the message is clear: his Venus is an old hag, money will ultimately get him nowhere and all his pretensions to a social gentilesse are a blind to the real values in life, such as godliness, a moral conscience and true friends. The picture just sketched effectively restates Chaucer’s criticism of the Sergeant of the Law, which bolsters my contention that he and Gower are one and the same. What Chaucer may have sought to do here is convey a sense of having quitted Gower with both an argument and an improved tale. If we take it as such, which I think we should, the point to strike us is that the victory that is implicitly claimed here is not so much a literary but a moral one. It deals with reproof rather than improvement, though this is also there. This is the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale all over again and goes to repeat that the prime issue of the duel was one of morality and that any literary rivalry always came second. Another thing to note is that Chaucer’s tone is so much mellower here. If this is a correct interpretation, can we expect Chaucer’s audience to have picked up the direction of his remarks? The answer is affirmative. The hag’s speech is a signal departure from the traditional tale. The chances that Chaucer’s public would have understood what he was driving at are considerable. As Helen Cooper puts it so cogently, “perhaps the single most important fact about literary conventions is that variations on them are immediately significant: medieval readers were in the habit of reading intertextually”.82 81 Chaucer’s use of spectacle here is specifically noted in Onions’ Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology: “device for assisting defective eyesight XIV (sg., Ch.; pl., Lydg.)”. Also, in late medieval iconography the spectacle occurs as a symbol of avarice: Howard Hibbard, Caravaggio (1983; London: Thames & Hudson 1988), p 100. 82 Cooper, Structure, p 3. I take it that the same thing holds good for listeners.

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To return to matters at hand, the riddle’s adapted choice between foul and faithful or fair and fickle is of course bound up with the Wife’s preaching. In terms of the marriage advertisement, what she is saying here is that she may look old and ugly but the man who is lucky enough to acquire her as his wife and mistress will find her as frisky as any lovely young thing and faithful to boot, whereas with respect to the sentence of her tale she is implicitly made to refer to the Parson’s description of the foulness of sin and the fairness of salvation. There are some pretty damning implications here, which would not have escaped Chaucer’s public. The riddle’s break with the conventional resolution of the tale would have alerted them to its significance. Gower’s more traditional choice of fair by day and foul by night or vice versa does not require any such intricate interpretation of the point that the Priest seeks to make nor is it in need of any great emendation. He also differs from Chaucer in letting the hag change into a lovely eighteen-year-old before she sets the choice. This runs against the folktale grain and Chaucer is dramatically correct in postponing her metamorphosis until the knight’s final surrender. What looks like another conscious rewriting of Gower is the transformation of the Loathly Lady itself. Unlike Gower, Chaucer refuses to go in for any enchantment by way of explanation. This has the virtue of making the tale a much more self-contained product than Gower’s version, since it so evidently keeps out unnecessary motifs. Her change into a lovely young girl is part and parcel of the magic that women can bring to bear upon men willing to go along with their wishes and desires. The absence of the enchantment motif further links up with what we shall discuss as the sentence of the Wife of Bath’s Tale: she is no enchanted victim of evil but a conscious trespasser against the will and law of Christ. The Wife’s coda is the irreverent summing up of her philosophy, referring to the three types of husbands which she distinguishes: the Jankynlike ones, “meeke, yonge, and fressh abedde”, the old and stingy ones (her first three husbands) and those “that wol nat be governed by hir wyves” (her fourth). No such thing is found in Gower. All of these maistrie and courtly love related variations on the folktale are plainly Chaucer’s additions and unlikely to have been part of his model. They are absent from each and every version of the folktale, including Gower’s, and can be safely assigned to Chaucer’s auctorial intervention. Together with the proximity in time and space of

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the tale of Florent, the opportunity that it afforded and, above all, the motive that Chaucer was given for using it, these findings combine naturally with a definition of the Wife of Bath’s Tale as something borrowed from Gower. Once we allow that their major differences are to be attributed to the Wife’s requirements – and it is hard to see why we should not do so, in the light of our discussion here – there remains no legitimate reason for anyone to dismiss the tale of Florent as Chaucer’s immediate source. The Source and Analogue Evidence Findings such as these, I realize, run counter to several of the older comparative Chaucer studies, done by scholars such as Bartlett J. Whiting, R.S. Loomis and Sigmund Eisner, all of whom are insistent upon an entirely different origin for the Wife of Bath’s Tale and a different relation with the tale of Florent. In fact, to judge by Benson’s summary of the subject, the notion of Gower as a likely source remains not so much unrecognized as undesired.83 While our discussion above has made it sufficiently clear what the effective situation is like, it seems to me well worth our trouble, in the light of this antagonism and by way of double-checking our findings, to have a brief look at the sources and analogues of the two tales and see if we can identify where things went wrong in earlier times. In general folktale terms, the question where the Wife of Bath’s Tale and Gower’s Florent come from is easily answered.84 They belong to precisely that one major folktale cycle whose great age is well attested and whose origin may ultimately lie in dim and far-off prehistoric times with rituals figuring animal diguises and animal-like gods. This is the cycle which we find in Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson’s Types of the Folktale as The Man on a Quest for his Lost Wife (types 400-424), The Search for the Lost Husband (types 425-449) and Brother or Sister in Search of One Another (types 450-459).85 Loosely speaking, these are what I should like to term the Cupid (Amor, Eros) and Psyche cycle of folktales. The basic notion of these 83

Benson, p 873. Folktale is a somewhat misleading term. What we are talking about is Zaubermärchen, which roughly translates as “magic folktale(s)”. 85 Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale (1961; Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1964 2nd revised edition), pp 128-56. 84

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tales is one whereby the husband or wife or, less frequently, brother or sister is a gruesome or enchanted creature, animal or ogre mostly, and is discovered to be a shape-shifter who occasionally turns into a human being. This person then disappears after some transgression by the hero(ine) and is found again only after a long quest, with all sort of trials and tribulations along the way. Those familiar with Near Eastern and Egyptian mythology may have noted the presence of motifs from such ancient myths as Ishtar’s underworld quest for her Lost Tammuz and Isis’ quest for her slain Osiris.86 The Isis association is neither accidental nor far-fetched but undeniably documented in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses of Lucius, written in the second century AD and better known as The Golden Ass. Here, for the first time, we encounter the tale of Cupid and Psyche.87 Its heroine, Psyche, is well-named, suggesting an ultimate metaphysical transfiguration (something that we still discern in such distant descendants as the Wife of Bath’s Tale), the more so as psyche also denotes a butterfly, a metamorphous creature passing from the stages of caterpillar and pupa to a final aetherically winged epiphany, whence no doubt the association with the human spirit. Such shape-shifting is in full harmony with the basic transformations delineated by the folktale itself. In addition, the book’s (anti)hero Lucius is made to relive many of the motions of the folktale when he undergoes a transformation into an ass, in punishment of offending Isis, and only after many ordeals regains his human shape, during his initiation into her mysteries. A signal aspect here is, doubtless, the semi-theriomorphic nature of the Egyptian gods, who generally have human shapes but animal heads and of whom Isis is one. It is a factor that goes a long way to help interpret the true nature of the shape-changer of the magic folktale and, incidentally, underscores a reading of this type of folktale as a rite de passage that involves myth re-enacted on a human level. Apuleius did not invent his Cupid and Psyche, though he clearly made all sort of changes.88 His version represents the first recorded 86

S.H. Hooke, Middle Eastern Mythology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), pp 3941, 67-70 87 The Golden Ass [The Transformations of Lucius], transl. Robert Graves (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950). There is actually a whole chapter on Isis and her initiation rites in the book. 88 Graves, p 18.

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case of this folktale passing over into literature, thus giving us a most welcome date for this yet also raising the thorny question of what the tale was like before he adapted it and how much his version influenced the subsequent folktale variants – a subject on which Aarne/ Thompson remain silent. It is, however, found in Jan-Öjvind Swahn’s Tale of Cupid and Psyche, a study which attempts to trace the spread of a number of folktale types belonging to the Cupid and Psyche cycle. As a study, it is a well-argued one and Swahn steers away from some of the major pitfalls in his field, but its chief assumptions, which are in line with the Finnish school of folktale studies, are unsound and therefore lead to unreliable conclusions.89 A further and puzzling shortcoming of Swahn’s otherwise interesting study is that Apuleius’ tale, from which his study takes its name and which suggests so many possible approaches, if only by its age and context, is given only a summary notice of seven pages. What should have been a major source on which to base a serious attempt to reconstruct the contemporaneous folktale from which Apuleius must 89

Jan Öjvind Swahn, The Tale of Cupid and Psyche (Lund: Gleerup, 1955). The chief pitfalls are: an obsession with Indo-European (“Aryan”) roots or, failing these, Teutonic ones; and interpretation along “Frazerian” lines, whereby motifs and episodes are interpreted in J.G. Frazer’s style, i.e. at the hand of selectively collected but not necessarily related material. The Finnish school sought (seeks?) to trace the spread of folktale types through its socalled ‘historic-geographic [sic] method’. Its concession to history, however, solely consists of noting dates of recording, which is marginally useful at most and tells us little or nothing about the folktales’ true age. Its geographical angle is even more dubious. It presupposes that the geographical spread of a specific folktale is a reflection of its dispersal, both in time and place, much like ripples in a pond, so that through its recording somehow a common centre may be arrived at that must have been its origin. This is subject to several major objections. One, it discounts the very real possibility of migration in random directions at random speeds, of disruptive influences, such as the elimination and displacement of entire populaces as a result of war and conquest, far-ranging epidemics and other disasters or, at the other end of the spectrum, simple fads of popularity. Two, it conveniently disregards (as do the writers of the Types of the Folktale) the fact that worldwide folk-tale recording has been done on a most unequal basis: not only does its intensity vary from country to country, with Europe at its apex, but such huge potential folktale sources as India and China were largely unexplored at the time of its writing – and presumably still are to a major extent. Thus many of the school’s findings must be regarded as slanted and premature. A further faulty assumption is that research on a historio-geographical basis will not only lead us to a tale’s source but will also reveal its original contours. Just like folktale interpretation itself, this necessarily involves so much arbitrariness that it eludes the test of scientific falsifiability.

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have drawn his account, and trace its origins, is largely disregarded. Also, Swahn fails to note, like so many before him, that Apuleius’ Cupid and Psyche does not stand by itself.90 Instead, it serves as an esoteric key to the metamorphoses (a keyword that ought to alert any reader, as shape-shifting is a major aspect of the Cupid and Psyche cycle) that happen to its anti-hero Lucius. Differently put, the changes that Lucius is made to undergo and the initiation through which he is propelled appear to retrace the essential stages of the folktale as experienced by the “animal” husband, Cupid. There has presumably been much reworking here of the original material, but one notable thing at least is that Apuleius must have known a variant of the tale in which the Beauty and the Beast situation figured an animal (ass) as the lover, which occurs as an episode in the book but is absent in his recounting of the Cupid and Psyche tale proper. Apuleius was not the last to introduce a tale belonging to the Cupid and Psyche cycle to the realm of official literature. It happened again when Gower and Chaucer picked one of its offshoots, the Loathly Lady tale, which is a close variant of The Frog King (type 440).91 A briefer tale than Cupid and Psyche, its basic outline is as follows: The Frog King or Iron Henry. A maiden [princess] promises herself to a frog in a spring. The frog comes to the door, the table, the bed. Turns into a prince. 90

Although I cannot believe that I am the first to relate Lucius’ own metamorphoses to the incidents of the märchen of Cupid and Psyche, whose inclusion in the Golden Ass is there as an evident key, I have been unable to trace any studies dealing with this. Swahn’s study, however, seems to indicate a very real possibility of the subject having been persistently overlooked. Some further studies on the subject of Cupid and Psyche are: J. Dietze, ‘Zum Märchen von Amor und Psyche’, Philologus 59 (1900): 136-47; R. Helm, ‘Das “Märchen” von Amor und Psyche’, Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und Deutsche Literatur, 17 [vol 33] (1914): 170-209; R. Reitzenstein, Das Märchen von Amor und Psyche (Antrittsrede Univ. Freiburg, Leipzig, 1912); ibid, Die Gottin Psyche in der Hellenistischen und frühchristlichen Literatur (Heidelberg: Winter, 1917; ibid, ‘Noch einmal Eros und Psyche’, Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 28 (1930): 42-87; E. Tegethoff. Amor und Psyche: Studien zum Märchentypus von Amor und Psyche (Bonn/ Leipzig: Schroeder, 1922); O. Weinreich, ‘Das Märchen von Amor und Psyche und andere Volksmärchen im Altertum’, in: L. Friendlander, ed. Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von August bis zum Ausgang der Antonine. Leipzig, 1921: 89-132. None of these provide any special insights, with the exception perhaps of Weinreich, whose overview reminds us that several folktales familiar to us were already known in Roman times. 91 Aarne/Thompson, p 149.

The Testament of Love | 213 I. Promise to Marry the Frog. (a) To the youngest of three sisters a frog in a spring gives clear water (a ball thrown into the water). (b) In return he exacts the promise that the girl shall marry him. II. Reception of the Frog. (a) Though the girl has forgotten her promise, the frog appears at her door and requests entrance. (b) He then sleeps at the door, on the table, and finally in her bed. III. Disenchantment. The frog is disenchanted and becomes a prince (a) by being allowed to sleep in the girl’s bed, (b) by a kiss, (c) by decapitation, (d) by being thrown against the wall, or (e) by having his frog-skin burnt. IV. Iron Henry. His faithful servant has three iron bands around his heart to keep it from breaking; at his master’s rescue the bands snap one by one.

Apart from the wrong genders and the shape-shifter’s guise as a loathly frog (and the fourth episode, which – plotwise – is plainly an extraneous addition) the overall story-line is roughly similar to that of Florent and the Wife of Bath’s Tale, yet distant enough for it not to have been their source.92 Much closer is Type 406A*, curiously overlooked by the entire field of Chaucer source and analogue research.93 Here, however, the problem is that it has only been recorded in Poland and no information is provided on its age, place of recording or by whom the recording was done, so that it is impossible to decide whether it represents a source or a folktale offshoot somehow based upon Chaucer or Gower. Also, Aarne/Thompson’s description lacks detail and further information, which does not help, either.94 All the same, it is worth our while to have a brief look: The Defeated King Regains the Throne. (a) A king, who has been defeated, receives help from an old woman in the woods, (b) to whom he promised [sic] marriage; (c) to the sound of the trumpet which he 92

Swahn considers the “Iron Henry” episode to have been borrowed from Type 425K. This makes excellent sense, as Iron Henry is plainly extraneous. It is, however, nowhere made clear what the link is which he discerns with 425K. More clarifying is the brief discussion of this spurious episode that is found in David Luke ed., Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm – Selected Tales (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), pp 14-15. 93 Aarne/Thompson, p 135. The (unexplained) asterisk is theirs. 94 This is a frequent problem. There are no discernible guidelines provided by the authors to show what criteria are applied to determine the constituent episodes in any given märchen nor is it clear on what basis motifs are specifically identified. Everything is very haphazard, the only safe rule of thumb being that the better-known tales get more attention than others.

214 | The Testament of Love received [sic] from the old woman, appears an army which defeats the enemy; (d) the king forgets about his promise, but admonished, submits himself [sic] to the punishment; (e) then the old woman changes into the [sic] young girl, forgives him and becomes his wife.

By the looks of it, we need not worry overmuch. There is still a lot to distinguish between this sketchy summary and Gower and Chaucer’s versions, which makes borrowing from either one of them less likely, even if Poland as the sole place of its recording remains a bit of a problem. Still, we cannot reject out of hand the possibility that Type 406A* should be a survival of a once more popular folktale. The presence here of the familiar folktale motif of serendipity, the unlookedfor acquisition of a key instrument or knack needed to overcome unforeseen tests and trials, in this case the old woman’s magic trumpet, is rather reassuring. It suggests folktales rather than literary invention. The above is the closest we can get to Chaucer and Gower on the basis of the present state of märchen studies. What about Gower’s immediate source, however? On this point we have very little to go by. We cannot even say whether Gower worked directly from the oral tradition or had access to some written analogue. This view is not shared by Sigmund Eisner and others, who believe in separate sources for Florent and the Wife of Bath’s Tale. Eisner thinks that he can trace the latter’s origins to a twelfth-century Irish original, which involves Niall of the Nine Hostages and is familiarly referred to as The Sovranty of Erin.95 Here a hag, representing rule over Ireland, is visited by several princes “competing for the kingship, and the fulfilment of her request for a kiss becomes the test of their fitness for sovereignty, which only one (in this instance, Niall) successfully undergoes”.96 If anything, what this analogue makes abundantly clear is that Eisner’s tale is no true folktale but one that has been literarily adapted to carry a political message. It is not very logical to assume that the Wife of Bath’s Tale is based on this tale, when at the same time it is obviously closer to the oral traditon – as is Gower’s version – in that it entirely lacks the political dimension. Eisner’s view implies an impossibly circuitous route whereby the original folktale was first liter95

Robinson, p 703. G.H. Maynadier, The Wife of Bath’s Tale: Its Sources and Analogues, “Grimm Library”, vol xiii. (London: Nutt 1901), p 146; ‘Sigmund Eisner, A Tale of Wonder’, a critical review by Bernard F. Huppé, MLQ 20 (1959): 97-98; Loomis, p 501-05. 96 Robinson, p 703.

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arily adapted for political purposes and then somehow slipped back into the oral tradition, losing its political message in the process, for when it resurfaces with Gower and Chaucer the two variants that they come up with are in the folktale tradition and plainly a-political. As seasoned political animals, both of them would surely have been capable of making good use of a political dimension, if any such thing had been suggested by their model. In particular, Gower’s active involvement in the great power struggle between Richard and Henry would have been an excellent excuse for him to come up with a tale about the “sovranty of England”. His silence here speaks volumes. Also, as an analogue, the tale of Niall is too distant from either Gower or Chaucer to be worth considering, even if its Loathly Lady is an autonomous shape-shifter and no victim of enchantment. Type 406A*, for instance, is much closer and the same goes for the basic elements of Type 440. To deal with this problem, if at all recognized, Eisner postulates a lost intermediate version. This makes his theory one more denial of Chaucer’s conscious authorship in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, to which we must add that it also fails to pay due attention to Gower’s Florent as the undisputably closest analogue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale that we possess. Similarly, much of the discussion around the story’s theme of “sovereignty” lacks a good awareness of what the folktales say upon this point. Among the most persistent of motifs in the Cupid and Psyche cycle are those of royalty (divinity even, if we count Apuleius’ Isis) and submission, which are mirror words for sovereignty and obedience.97 It is anyone’s choice how to adapt them to their story-telling purposes, whether royal rule in Ireland or dominance at home – the motifs themselves are there at all times to remind us that they deal with power wielding and submission. Thus, there is no real evidence of an Irish or even generally Celtic source for the basic tale. Its chief basis lies in the figure of the Loathly Lady as a shape-shifter, which Eisner presents as a typically Irish development, without any basis in fact. As our Polish folktale type shows and as seconded by Hartwell, who favours a Dutch derivation, 97

It is worth noting that Apuleius is nearly twenty centuries closer to the source than we are. Thus, his interweaving of myth and märchen elements may well reflect aspects of the magic folktale’s ultimate origins more clearly than its modern descendants. As for the theme itself, this is plainly all about the conflict between exalted status and the acquisition of humility, an aspect that has lost none of its force in Chaucer’s and Gower’s versions.

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there is no special need to look to Ireland. Such a lady figures plainly and widely in the narrative tradition of the late Middle Ages .98 Almost unnoticed we have entered the realm of analogue studies of the Wife of Bath’s Tale. What they have come up with, besides Gower’s tale of Florent, are one romance analogue, the Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell, and three ballads – the Marriage of Gawain, King Henry and the Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter.99 The latter two are only distantly related. Even if the various versions share enough motifs, incidents and passages to recognize them as being related to types 406A and 440, they are also quite dissimilar in many places. Thus the Weddynge of Sir Gawen, the Marriage of Gawain and King Henry begin in more or less the same way: the hero hunts down a beautiful deer and is confronted by a hostile figure. Gower’s version is closer to this than Chaucer’s, since his includes the motif of a killing as the reason for the imposition of a task/quest. Only Chaucer and Gower share the motif of the knight’s judgement by a woman, though Chaucer’s lady is friendly and Gower’s is not. In the Shepherd’s Daughter, the Weddynge of Sir Gawen and in Chaucer the Loathly Lady accompanies the knight to the court. In King Henry and the Shepherd’s Daughter his test is in sleeping with her and not dependent upon any riddle. These and other things make it rather difficult to see how exactly these analogues are related. Of course, the basic tale could have reached Gower in the shape of a ballad or reminded Chaucer of one. Indeed, the rape motif may point in that direction, even if the ballad in which we find this (The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter) is obviously not directly related. Ballads like these, which we are familiar with as popular ballads, were widely in vogue from the twelfth century till they were largely super98 Hartwell, pp 9-21. Early in his study, Hartwell pays lip service to the findings of Eisner c.s. (pp 7-8). Later he comes up with arguments of his own for supposing the abhorrent description of the loathly hag to be based on a Dutch model and proposes a genesis that excludes any Irish sources (pp 34-35). The unlikelihood of an Irish derivation is obvious, but I am not convinced that there should have been a Dutch model. There are notable parallels but no verbal correspondences of any note. Nor does Hartwell seem to have studied any other continental variants. For this reason, I think that we had better stick to the observation made earlier in this chapter, namely that the figure of the Loathly Lady is an automatic invitation to any good story-teller to dwell lovingly upon the abhorrence of her appearance, and take congruent portraits as similar solutions arrived at by narrators dealing with the task of “horrifying” her. 99 Whiting, Sources & Analogues: 223-68.

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seded by the broadside ballads that were initiated by the sixteenthcentury printing presses, from which time onwards some were preserved orally. The problem is that there is actually little evidence of the existence of ballads at the time. In a few cases their presence before 1400 is recorded, but this quite rare.100 A complicating factor is that medieval ballads generally turn out to be based on already existing literary models, which does not make them very clarifying in this context. At best, they serve as indicators of literary predecessors. A good instance is the ballad of Sir Orfeo, which – as its name indicates – falls back upon a classical model.101 Similarly, the Marriage of Gawain is regarded as belonging to “ballads of minstrelsy”, which means that “the evidence of personal composition is so strong that one may doubt whether these pieces are truly traditional”.102 This makes it much like the Weddynge, which is also plainly someone’s personal product. Chronological Confusion Let us dissect a piece of one of the works in question. One analogue that is unmistakably related to the Wife of Bath’s Tale is the romance of the Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell, which at the same time is the most rambling of them all. Badly constructed and regrettably lacking a page, it involves an inordinate amount of travelling to and fro and even a switch of heroes. Arthur gets into a scrape with one Sir Gromer Somer Joure and is set the task of finding the answer to what women desire most. By promising Gawain in marriage to the Loathly Lady he manages to get out of his predicament and it is then for poor Gawain to submit to the punishment. The switch of protagonists strongly suggests that two different tales were fused here in none too subtle a fashion and perhaps with Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight in mind. Now it is in itself not unthinkable for either Gower or Chaucer to have used a tale like this as the basis for his own tale, but this would have required a rigorous pruning of unnecessary excrescences, since both their tales have a far simpler plot. Logic dictates that it is most unlikely that the two of them could have done so separately and still arrive at tales which are notable for their close100

Entwistle, pp 232-33. Entwistle, p 236. 102 Entwistle, p 104. 101

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ness in time, space and construction. A joint adaptation is equally unlikely, in the light of the differences that distinguish their versions. Thus, the best view to take is for either Chaucer or Gower to have been the adapter and the other to have been the borrower. This being so, the borrower can hardly have been Gower, both in view of the early circulation of his tale and all the other evidence and argument that has been brought to bear on the subject here and elsewhere. True, the Arthurian element recurs in the Weddynge of Sir Gawen but parts of this romance are demonstrably imitative of Chaucer, thus indicating that the entire Arthurian element may be ultimately traceable to him. This is clearest in its listing of women’s desires, a passage that has no parallel in Gower. The correspondences are striking: The Weddynge of Sir Gawen

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

Somme sayd they lovyd to be welle arayd, Somme sayd they loved to be fayre prayed; Somme sayd they lovyd a lusty man, That in theyr armys can clypp them and kisse them than; Somme sayd one; somme sayd other; Summe men sayn we desyre to be fayre, Also we desyre to haue repayre Of diverse straunge men; Also we loue to haue lust in bed, And often we desyre to wed, Thus ye men nott ken. Yett we desyre anoder maner thyng, To be holden nott old, butt fresshe and yong,

Somme seyde wommen loven best richesse, Somme seyde honour, somme seyde jolynesse, Somme riche array,

Withe flatryng and glosyng and quaynt gyn, So ye men may vs wemen euere wyn, Of whate ye wole crave[…]

Yee goo fulle nyse, I wolle nott lye, Butt there is one thyng is alle oure fantasye…103 103

… somme seyden lust abedde And oftetime to be wydwe and wedde Somme seyden that oure hertes been moost esed Whan that we been yflatered and yplesed. [..] But in oure bed he was so fressh and gay, And therewithal so wel koude he me glose, Whan that he wolde han my bele chose, That thogh he hadde me bete on every bon, He koude wynne agayn my love anon. We wommen han, if that I shal nat lye, In this matere a queynte fantasye, Therafter wol we crie al day and crave.104

Sources & Analogues, ‘Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell’: 247, lines 199-203; 252-53, lines 408-20. 104 Wife of Bath’s Tale, 925-30, 508-12, 515-17.

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Such concordance is a bit of a shock. If Chaucer used Florent as his model and the differences are the result of his ambitions for the Wife of Bath, how are we to account for these remarkable similarities? Have we been wrong all along? On the basis of passages like this, Loomis feels that “the Wife’s Tale is [Chaucer’s] own rather free reworking of The Wedding or its immediate source”. Later he refines this to claiming that Chaucer’s original must stem “from a different and necessarily earlier branch in which the hero’s functions are not divided and in which a queen acts as judge”.105 The facts show him to be in error. The Weddynge of Sir Gawen is a mid-fifteenth century analogue and a romance at that, meaning that it is a literary construction. It is, essentially, someone’s attempt after half a century of lasting Chaucer popularity (so lasting that it was the second book to appear in print another fifty years later) to get a share. This is not something imitated by Chaucer but Chaucer imitated by a later, anonymous and mediocre author. Though part of the events of the romance are different and either stem from a version not known to Chaucer or, more likely, a different tale tradition, the imitation in the part which they share is fully borne out by the two parallel sets of women’s desires on the previous page. The Wife of Bath’s admissions, throughout, are to the point. They are illustrative of all her hectoring of husbands, repeating her admitted weaknesses in her earlier confession, and her permanent quest for maistrie. The Weddynge comes up with the same points but sadly lacks a Wife of Bath and thus fails to convince on each and every count. They are out-of-context elements, for the simple reason that the romance is not about female frailty, let alone women given to such a wide range of vice as she is. What clinches the matter is the fact that half of the correspondences are not with the Wife’s Tale at all but with the Jankyn episode in her Prologue [508-12, 515-17]. There is no conceivable route along which these could have ended up in the Weddynge save by borrowing from Chaucer. A better demonstration of its author’s debt to Chaucer is difficult to imagine. Interestingly, he also appears to have been aware of Gower’s version, as the antagonist’s intriguing name, Somer Joure (summer’s day) evidently paraphrases the name of Florent. The out-of-context argument also goes for the riddle that we find in the Weddynge. This is merely a means to end the hag’s trans105

Loomis, pp 501, 503.

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formation, not bound up with any discussion of the waywardness of the female but with an enchantment to be undone by a gentlemanly lover. Gawain’s foregoing the choice between foul by day and fair by night, which fits perfectly into the Wife of Bath’s scheme of things whose riddle is more subtle, fails to carry any significance in a tale that is not concerned with woman’s sovereignty. It merely points to a further indebtedness to Chaucer. True, there remains the Marriage of Gawain, but ballads – as we have already noted – are basically followers of literary models and hardly the folk product that we often take them for, so that it is a much likelier scenario for the ballad to be based upon the Weddynge than otherwise.106 As it is, I have not been the first to note these parallels. They were pointed out by Maynadier as long ago as 1901 and interpreted by him to indicate borrowing from Chaucer.107 Support for this is further provided by Hartwell, who so far has been the only one to subject Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell and some of its analogues to a closer study and comes up with several useful insights. He reaffirms our stance, deciding that “Fisher’s general point, that Gower, F [the tale of Florent] is Chaucer’s primary source at least in regard to structure and organization of content, with alterations to fit the character of the Wife of Bath, seems acceptable”.108 Regrettably, there is a serious flaw in the overall picture that Hartwell sketches. Without substantiation, he assumes the four analogues to go back to a single common Arthurian source. We recognize this as basically fallacious. There is no evidence of any Arthur-related elements until we come to the Wife of Bath and even then this is no more than a fourfold mention of his name, which is entirely insufficient. As soon as we discount the Arthurian aspect, however, Hartwell’s reconstruction largely falls apart. While we agree with him that Chaucer based his tale upon Gower and that the Weddynge is partially indebted to Chaucer, the exact nature of his common source is no longer clear. A common source there may have been at some time, but with Arthur out of the way it is impossible to decide whether the variants derive from a joint immediate source or represent some other configuration altogether. 106

Hartwell steers clear of dating any of the four analogues that he discusses, which is a serious shortcoming in an otherwise interesting study. 107 Maynadier, p 146. 108 Hartwell, p 31.

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Certainly, it is a rather incongruous notion to suppose that Chaucer was following Gower yet separately reincluding Arthurian material that Gower had thrown out. The option that the rape motif might indicate a similar Arthurian derivation, which we find in Eisner, does not work out, as it is not just absent in Florent but also in the Weddynge and not a true folktale motif anyway. If at all belonging to the common source that Hartwell proposes, it points to the ballad tradition, which poses all sorts of problems of its own.109 Another weak point in Hartwell’s scheme is that no satisfactory place is assigned to the Marriage of Gawain (in the diagram below designated as Percy, M) and none indeed to the other two related ballads, which, for no clear reason, are excluded from his study. True, their exact relation to the other analogues is rather obscure, yet if Chaucer used any source besides Gower it can only have been one like the Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter. At the same time, it is evident that, in view of the usual sequence of ballads following literary models, both the Marriage’s Arthurian elements and its further correspondences must mean that its writing was somehow dependent upon the Weddynge or a similar work. In the figure below, representing Hartwell (left) and my own interpretation (right), the ballad of King Henry and the Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter have been left out. *

*

Immediate & Common Arthurian Source

* Gower, F

(In)direct Non-Arthurian Source

* Gower, F

* Percy * Chaucer, WBT

* The Wedding

* Chaucer, WBT (first introduction of Arthurian elements)

* The Wedding Percy *

The relationships of the Wife of Bath’s Tale: on the left Hartwell’s reconstruction, on the right mine. 109

Eisner (pp 54-55).

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The Canterbury Tales at the Time of the Challenge At this point it seems a good idea, if only to place the changes that Chaucer effected on the Wife, Pardoner and others in their proper context, to try and draw the rough outlines of the Canterbury Tales as they must have been when, in mid-1390 Chaucer was challenged to improve on Gower, resulting in a Testament of Love effectuated in one or more reading performances and initiating an extensive series of shiftings and new inclusions within the Tales. Of course it is not possible to do so with one hundred per cent accuracy but we might come close enough, as long as we keep in mind what we have found on the unreliability of many of the dates officially proposed for Chaucer’s tales. Dating uncertainty, both as to the time of their writing and their inclusion, is one of our great handicaps. As Fragment II (Group B1) is at the centre of unrest and a new beginning of sorts seems indicated, it is a reasonably safe guess that Fragment I was, nay must have been, there all the time. All the same, the General Prologue was slightly different and contained fewer pilgrims. The Knight’s Tale, too, may have been somewhat different. The Cook’s Tale was presumably still being composed. Next (this takes us to an undifferentiated Fragment II) came the Sergeant of the Law with the Melibee. His Epilogue – now assigned by the editors to the Man of Law yet regarded as a discarded piece of writing – makes it clear that the Wife of Bath was the one immediately following upon the Sergeant. She was engaged in a quarrel with the Pardoner, which involved her telling what is now the Shipman’s Tale. In my view, the Pardoner retaliated with his sample sermon, which is largely familiar as the Pardoner’s Tale but lacked the Sins of the Tavern and the second application that we find in the final version and ended on a greatly different note. Probably, the Wife already possessed a considerable prologue of some 200 lines dealing with just one old husband and some further lines to include the Midas passage. The Pardoner-Shipman endlink indicates the presence of a moral tale following the Pardoner. The likeliest choice here is the Monk’s Tale, which, after inspiring Chaucer to recast the Pardoner as a modern instance of the tragic workings of the Wheel of Fortune, was assigned a different place and padded out with the Modern Instances, possibly inspired in their turn by the Pardoner’s fate.

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The major loose ends which this leaves us are the tale of Custance, the Clerk’s Tale and the original part played by the Parson. The Prologue of the Man of Law’s Tale indicates that the tale was previously assigned to someone else and, as we have discussed, the obvious person for this must be accounted the Merchant. Its earliest writing stage may have been for a religious occasion, much like his St Cecilia. Then there is the Clerk’s Tale. There are good indications, such as the second moralitas and Lenvoy de Chaucer, that allow us to assume that it was already involved in the pre-Testament situation, so that it too is included here. As for the Parson, his interruption of the Host in the Epilogue to the Man of Law’s Tale and the snubbing which he gets suggest that Chaucer may have entertained a quyting ploy here that involved the Wife of Bath. There is no saying, however, if he had at all come up with a viable tale already. In any case, Chaucer’s subsequent alterations would have scuppered such a plan. Alternatively, as he is somehow linked to the Man of Law through the latter’s endlink, the Parson as originally conceived may just barely have been the mystery cleric who has been alternatively proposed as the one to have first told the tale of Custance. This largely rounds off our discussion of the state of the preTestament Canterbury Tales. What is left are the Squire’s Tale, unfinished, and the tale of Sir Thopas, also unfinished. If any other tales were already involved, there is simply not sufficient evidence of this. As it is, the notable point here is that Chaucer had come so far already. With the influx of half a dozen Testament and Testament-related tales in or around 1391, there remain just a mere six tales that he included later. After all, the Testament involves the Wife of Bath’s Tale and the Parson’s Tale. Then there are the Merchant’s Tale and the Franklin’s Tale, whose role in the Marriage Debate and use of St Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum shows them to be closely associated with the Testament. Then, the Friar and Summoner must be closely linked: they qualify as replacements of the Pardoner in their brush with the Wife and one another respectively, and comply well with the virtue/vice requirement of the new plan. The Physician’s Tale is interesting because it is believed to have been originally meant for the Legend of Good Women, which links it plainly with the Testament of Love.110 It is also a tale shared with the Confessio Amantis, though Chaucer’s treatment 110

Benson, pp 901-02.

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of the subject is different, as it is not so much concerned with chastity as righteousness and the related concept of the “worm of conscience”. The remaining tales look like later inclusions. They are basically either writings from his Italian period which were refitted to serve his Canterbury project at a late date or older, commissioned pieces written for a special occasion. Thus, we find that the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale may have been meant for a congregation of chanouns religious and the Second Nun’s Tale with its narrator’s funny self-reference as an “unworthy sone of Eve” for St Cecilia’s Day.111 All fit into the new plan well but exhibit no notably close links to the Testament. The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is a case apart. It is relatable to the Marriage Debate, even if the Wife herself is not referred to. Its astronomical indications are that it was included in 1392, as the other options of 1381, 1387 and 1398 do not seem to work out. Internal evidence suggests that the poem, which is obviously political, seeks to link the Peasants’ Revolt (1381, whence no doubt the astronomical aspect) with newer threats to the throne: it is the rule of the roost that is plainly threatened in the tale. It implicitly gives us Richard and Anne as Chauntecleer and Pertelote and, most likely, the fox as Henry of Derby, as the insidious but unsuccessful threat to the entire henhouse. Such a picture fits well into an early ’nineties context when the Appellants’ brutal but short-lived moment of power was past and when the not-so-imaginary spectre of a take-over in 1388, only precluded by Henry’s falling-out with Gloucester (according to one contemporary chronicler), seemed no more than a bad dream. If Pertelote is Anne, this would place the inclusion of the Tale at some date before her death in June 1394 and thus bring the possibility of 1392 very close. Of course almost the same thing happened again in 1399, this time leaving Henry successful, but it is unthinkable that Chaucer should have sought to tell this tale under so grim a new regime and with so little regard to the deposed King and his deceased Queen or with such an unsatisfactory ending for the newly royal fox.112 As we 111

For the Canon’s Yeoman, see Benson, pp 946-47. The St Cecilia’s Day suggestion is mine, and fits in well with the Tale’s first recording in the F-Prologue to the Legend of Good Women as the Lyf of Seynt Cecile. Cf Benson, pp 942 and 943-44 note 62. 112 It is precisely this argument which shows that J.L. Hotson’s proposal that the fox stands for Richard’s champion Earl Marshal Mobray and Chauntecleer for Henry garbles the basic plot to such an extent that the tale becomes politically incomprehensible. Cf also Robinson, p 751 and Benson, p 935.

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have already discarded Anne’s death in 1394 as a reliable moment for dating Chaucer’s work, this date of 1392 would appear to be the latest one for any registered work on the Canterbury Tales. Having encountered no better explanation, I believe the unfinished tales to mark the moment of Chaucer’s switch to the Testament, taking them to be his latest concurrent work on three separate files of tales before all was turned upside down by Gower’s challenge. They represent him in midwork, as it were. If this is correct, then the implication is that there may have been three Groups or Fragments at this time. Or, as I prefer, there may have been three writing files, each ordered in a specific way so as perhaps to facilitate the book-binding process and each topped by an unfinished tale. There could even have been further files, but this is not a happy thought, as it would imply that Chaucer effectively halted work on the Tales after 1392. If there were three files, let us see how this works out. Fragment I (Group A) is no problem. Fragment II would have been rather bulky, comprising virtually all the other tales and ending with Sir Thopas on top, while Fragment III would have comprised the Squire’s Tale, give or take the presence of the Clerk’s Tale. A look at the Canterbury Tales as they are indicates that, in the shifting process caused by the Testament effort, the Man of Law was left behind in Fragment II (Group B1) but most ended up in Fragment VII (Group B2). If we reverse things, letting ourselves be guided by Groups rather than Fragments, this shows that in 1390 the sequence for the Canterbury Tales consisted of Group A, followed by B1 and B2 combined, and a third for the Squire (with or without the Clerk). Far be it from me to intentionally rekindle old debate but the sequence which we see here takes us straight to the heart of the Bradshaw shift, which precisely favours this order. But what it does is not so much prove the Bradshavians right. Rather, it indicates that what they have latched on to are Chaucer’s plans up to 1390, which is when he changed directions abruptly and did so without taking too much trouble to adapt everything to his new plan.

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5. Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath Confession in the Fourteenth Century One chapter ago it was indicated that the Wife of Bath’s Prologue is a confession in both the autobiographical and theological senses of the word and a lover’s confession at that, thus pointing directly to Gower as its inspirational source. Though easy to identify, it is also a subject that includes amazingly much that tends to escape our notice. So divergent a world view does our modern society subscribe to that many things commonplace and understood in Chaucer’s age have grown dim and obscure to us. The Wife of Bath’s confession, which is almost the entire Wife of Bath’s Prologue (the “almost” qualifying the first 193 lines of the Prologue, which are not part of it), is a clear example: we recognize the autobiographical aspects and the (anti)feminist arguments, but the idea that it could be a confession in the sacramental sense has, to my knowledge, been remarked on just once prior to this study.1 For all practical purposes confession is an account of the sins one has committed. This study calls for the all-out culpability of the Wife of Bath on this subject, since she is the obvious successor to Gower’s lover whose confession also ranges through all the Seven Deadly Sins. It finds no mean support in the fact that she engages in a lengthy confession. Where there is confession there is Deadly Sin, which is what confession is all about. And where there is a great deal of confession, it stands to reason that there is also a great deal of sin involved. As we shall soon find, this is well borne out by the facts. Confession should involve more, however, and here the Wife of Bath is less forthcoming. Some clarification of religious dogma and practice may be in order here. For the fourteenth century confession was a major element in the sacrament of penitence (poenitentia) and compulsory under Canon Law for all adult Christians. The fourth Lateran Council of 1215 had confirmed it as a duty to be performed at least once a year. The regular occasion for this was Easter, just after 1

Root: 252ff.

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the penitential weeks of Lent when even sexual activity was proscribed.2 It is in this context, by the way, that we must place the entire Canterbury undertaking, Wife of Bath’s confession and all, since evidently it takes place in celebration of precisely this occasion – a point which can hardly have escaped Chaucer’s public. And, in anticipation of things to come, it is also the worrisome context of her wooing of Jankyn some years before. The Council’s great concern was with pastoral care, and its rulings emphasized the need which it perceived for preaching and annual confession, whose effectuation was basically laid in the hands of the village priest. This led to a great demand for and a proliferation of handbooks outlining the conditions and requirements for preaching, penitence and confession, the proper identification of sin, the lines of questioning to be followed and the types of penance to be imposed.3 The scholastic environment in which all of this took place contributed to an increasing attention to detail in the next few centuries. There are manuals on virtually every aspect, ranging from a detailed discussion of the ethical stature of the preacher himself (Humbert of Romans)4 and exemplum collections for uninventive homilists5 to widely varying treatises on deadly sin. Our familiar Seven Deadly Sins were a late codificational development, as from early Christian times until well into the Middle Ages we sometimes come across an octet of sin and there were several other types of classification used as well.6 In fact, it is a bit of a surprise that no one ever came up with the tempting figure of twelve, as a

2

John Baldwin, ‘From the Ordeal to Confession: In Search of Lay Religion in Early Thirteenth Century France’, in: Peter Biller and A.J. Minnis eds, Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages (Bury St Edmunds: York Medieval P, 1998): 191-210, at p 202. Canon 21 of the Council stipulated that “all believers of either sex after arriving at the age of discretion should each faithfully confess all of his or her sins to his or her priest at least once a year and strive to fulfill the enjoined penance so that he or she could reverently receive the sacrament of the eucharist at least at Easter”. 3 Richard Newhauser, The Treatise on Vices and Virtues in Latin and the Vernacular (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), pp 142-43. 4 Walter M. Conlon ed., Treatise on Preaching by Humbert of Romans (London: Blackfriars, 1955). 5 The Confessio Amantis is essentially such an exemplum collection, though incorporated within a summa vitiorum framework: Newhauser, p 83. What Newhauser does not note is that the Canterbury Tales are also largely an exemplum collection. 6 Newhauser, pp 58, 91, 124, 127-29, 142-43, 181-193.

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New Testament favourite.7 For obvious reasons, these handbooks – summae – also tended to coalesce into handy encyclopedic compilations covering all the aspects of preaching and confession.8 The Parson’s Tale is such a compilation, even if the compiling was probably done by Chaucer himself rather than some ecclesiastical source. From a confessional point of view, it would have been all right for the Wife of Bath to confess her sins of love in the Easter season of abstinence, penitence and reflection, provided that this was done in the right spirit. For as its name indicates, the sacrament of penitence does not exactly brook permissiveness. Its central element is the notion of sin. There is venial sin, which is pardonable, and mortal or deadly sin. The latter cuts off a person from God’s grace and it is the duty of the Church as well as the sinner to effect a reconciliation. The sacrament has three requirements: contrition (or, at least, attrition), confession, and satisfaction, that is, penance. Confession involves a detailed description of the Deadly Sins one has committed and the circumstances under which they occurred. The Wife of Bath’s confession entirely conforms to this requirement, while – as we noted – its extreme length may be taken to indicate the full measure of her sinfulness. In this context, contrition is a condition which needs no special comment. Attrition may be a different matter. It is the “fear of God,” representing the notion that if sinners cannot be moved to virtue voluntarily they may be frightened into being good. The Pardoner’s sermon is an excellent example of this. Officially recognized as second best, it was nonetheless accepted as a common and effective means of moving people to adhere to the precepts of the Church. In the Parson’s Tale it is the third “cause that oghte moeve a man to Contricioun [, namely] drede of the day of doom and of the horrible peynes of helle” [158]. Though the occasion is well-suited to confession, not so the Wife of Bath’s spiritual attitude. The basic principle underlying the duty of confession is that without a clear knowledge of a person’s sins and the context wherin they have taken place the confessor cannot apply his power to absolve from the guilt incurred nor reconcile the 7 While this seems never to have been attempted, there are late medieval tractates on the “duodecim abusiis saeculi” which come close. Newhauser, p 92. 8 Newhauser, pp 65, 83-86, 93, 131-35. Even Gower’s chapter on the education of a king is the sort of thing that is often encountered in the Tractatus de vitiis et virtutibus (pp 65, 83), where it is known as Fürstenspiegel (Mirror of Princes).

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sinner with his Maker. On the basis of confession the necessary penance is prescribed and not until its effectuation can the reconciliation with God be officially concluded; as long as it lasts no participation in holy communion is permitted. The Wife of Bath’s confession must be supposed to be uttered by someone who is both cut off from grace and unreconciled with God. Her boasts leave no room for a penitential spirit: she is in no way heartily sorry for having offended God and there is no indication that she ever will be. Nor is the notion of attrition moving her in any way compatible with her self-portrait. In fact, to judge by her word that her parish priest was not kept well-informed of her private affairs and of what went on in her heart, she is wont to make a mockery of confession, lacks any sense of contrition and is an old hand at evading penance.9 The reason why is something that becomes ever clearer as her Prologue and Tale progress: she will brook no male authority over herself, be it husband, confessor, Christ or even God Himself. While we recognize the Parson’s Tale to be the final touchstone for the Canterbury Tales at large, as a manual of confession it stands in a special relation to the Wife of Bath’s confession that is equalled by just a few other tales, chief among which we must count the Pardoner’s similar confession. Its discussion of penitence, of the need for confession and of the nature of sin, its exposition of the deady sins and their remedial virtues, and its examination of the conditions of confession and of the use and forms of penance (“satisfaction”) must be assumed to have a particular application to her. It is there, so to speak, as a work of reference for us to consult as to what she stands for spiritually. The presence in the Wife’s portrait of textual echoes and borrowings from the Parson’s Tale is significant, since they bear out this interpretation,10 and there is of course the already discussed matter of a construction that they share. 9

Something like this is also noted by Helen Cooper (The Canterbury Tales, Oxford: OUP, 1989, p 140). She, however, takes the Wife’s impenitence to argue against a theological dimension: “Although the Wife freely admits her past misliving, and in that sense it can be described as ‘confessional’, its tone and purpose take it far away from any recognizable theological form of confession”. 10 The best-known borrowed phrase is the one about going to “the offrynge bifore hire” in the General Prologue. This one and others are discussed at the end of this chapter. Further key echoes centre upon the words neighebour, thral, foul, appetit and compaignye. Cf also Emil Koeppel on the verbal correspondences with the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale.

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Ideally, confession and its attendant states of contrition/attrition and penance ought to go beyond mere neutralization of the confessant’s sinfulness. The sinner should be moved toward a state of virtue. For every Deadly Sin there is such a remedial condition, though nowhere subjected to any such elaborate subdivision as are the sins. The Parson’s Tale expansively outlines the various remedies, and clearly the Wife of Bath ought to be judged in their light as well. Naturally, the Parson as confessor general to the Canterbury pilgrims cannot be expected to make any specific remarks oriented at the Wife, since the secret of the confessional is involved here. But we do find that Chaucer did appoint something like a private father confessor to the Wife. That is to say, he himself (or, if one wishes, the Clerk, as an ironical Jankyn substitute) points out in direct reference to her that she wants all the virtues necessary to nullify her sins. The place where we find this is at the end of the Clerk’s Tale. There the Wife of Bath is specifically mentioned and discussed in Lenvoy de Chaucer: six stanzas of explicit reference to the Wife in terms of mortal sin and remedial grace. Whatever function we assign to the Clerk, one of them being that of participant in the Marriage Debate, there can be little doubt (vide the naming of the “Envoy”) that in this place he is the mouthpiece of an auctorial Chaucer applying the lesson of her confession to point out that, as a most impatient Griselda, the Wife of Bath has been found wanting on every count. We shall return to this in somewhat more detail at the end of this chapter. Assuming that the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale are structurally inspired by the Confessio Amantis, what about the Wife of Bath herself? Was she also suggested by Gower? Is she a profaner rendition of Gower’s Venus, stripped of her divine pretensions and exposed for what she really is – Concupiscence caught in the middle of the “olde daunce” of sin and damnation? We have already provisionally identified her as such and correctly so, it seems to me. The Wife of Bath appears as an obvious demonstration that the Venus to whom Gower pays homage is nothing but an unregenerate Eve, out to snare the unwary in her web. She is recognizably the Dame Venus of the Canterbury pilgrimage. Her physiognomy, her finery and her confession confirm her in this role. Like the traditional medieval Venus, “conventionally associated with the entangling chains or snares of

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concupiscence”,11 which is how she is depicted in the Parliament of Fowls,12 she is the temptress along the way whose melody “echoes the song of the sirens [...], the music of the lascivious Venus, and the song of St Paul's Old Man”.13 She is made to admit as much herself: I hadde the prente of seinte Venus seel. As help me God, I was a lusty oon, And faire, and riche, and yong, and wel bigon, And trewely, as myne housbondes tolde me, I hadde the beste quoniam myghte be. For certes, I am al Venerien In feelynge, and myn herte is Marcien. Venus me yaf my lust, my likerousnesse, And Mars yaf me my sturdy hardynesse; Myn ascendent was Taur, and Mars therinne. Allas, allas! That evere love was synne! I folwed ay myn inclinacioun By vertu of my constellacioun; That made me I koude noght withdrawe My chambre of Venus from a good felawe. [WBP, 604/618]

This wonderful jumble of Venus in all possible manifestations, from canonized sainthood through astrology to physiological euphemism, leaves the basic point clear. The Wife of Bath is wittingly delineated as the human embodiment of Venus as the Goddess of Lust, entirely profane and without a spark of spirituality to redeem her. And, needless to say, Chaucer’s fourfold reference to Venus here is explicit substantiation of who it was that stood model for his Wife of Bath. At the same time – and this has also been pointed out before – her thorough involvement with the subject of love, both in the General Prologue and in her own Prologue, identifies her as a most down-toearth successor to Gower’s much more high-flown Amans. She is entirely governed by kinde, which stands for the amoral urgings of one’s natural constitution, and subverts resoun in order to attain her ends, Yet for all her pretensions she wants the gentilesse and susceptibility to resoun that distinguish Gower’s lover.

11

Robertson, p 105. The Parliament of Fowls, lines 260-273. 13 Robertson, p 134. 12

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The Seven Deadly Sins The Pardoner’s laconic reference at the end of his tale to sudden accidents that may befall some of the company – a fall from a horse, a broken neck – is less of an idle threat than it may appear to us. It has often been emphasized that the Middle Ages were familiar with death in a way that man in modern Western society is not. And particularly the idea of death in a state of sin was much to be feared. Not only was it in itself undesirable – it could be interpreted as a divine indication that the victim was not worthy to die in a state of grace. In the England of Chaucer the horrors of the Black Death were widely seen as such a divine affliction. To many it was a sign of the Second Coming and it must indeed be judged to have been a visitation of apocalyptic proportions. To say that people died like flies is no exaggeration. The lowest estimate is 25 million casualties for all of Western Europe, but the actual toll in lives was probably far higher. What happened in Asia, whence the plague spread, is unknown but must have been no less terrible. Between one and two quarters of the English populace died in the first pandemic, many more in the years thereafter, and the very fabric of society and the national economy were affected. The plague’s message, emphasized by the voice from the pulpit, the paintings on the church walls, the song in the street, the smell in the noses and the burial burden on its way to the grave was understood by all: life is brief and death is everywhere.14 Huizinga’s familiar study, The Waning of the Middle Ages, shows the two extreme avenues of escape by which people sought relief from the horrors of existence: escape into a life of pleasure (Carpe Diem) or into religiosity (Carpe Deum).15 The Canterbury Tales are a case in point and some of us might be tempted to hesitate as to which side Chaucer was on, as a courtier, man of the world and writer. Many of his best stories seem to be in the Carpe Diem category. Yet, to judge by other tales and particularly the inclusion of the Parson’s Tale at the end of the Canterbury Tales, he chose to be on the side of the angels – a point that is further emphasized by his Retraction. How are we to resolve this seeming contradiction? To some extent, I am sure, we never can. As a fourteenth-century author Chaucer 14

Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), passim. Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924; Harmondsworth: Peregrine, 1965), passim. 15

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apparently shared the ambivalency of his age. His Carpe Diem tales, such as the Miller’s Tale, the Reeve’s Tale and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, are unsurpassed and demonstrate a narrative gusto that is unparallelled, with the major exception of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale. Upon closer consideration, however, these tales turn out to be so riddled with biblical reference and religious comment that they are easily shown to be their own refutation. He clearly put his heart into them, but he reserved his soul for something else. A similar suggestion of a pious Chaucer or at least a Chaucer much concerned with religion is found in his religious translations, among which the straightlaced Parson’s Tale and the various virtuous tales of the Canterbury pilgrims. Our reluctance to recognize what we might term Chaucer’s orthodox leanings, whether religious or social, is based on a wide spectrum of interpretation, ranging from actual fact to whatever may be topical in any given period of Chaucer study. There is his recognition of the ultimate redeemability of all sinners as expressed in the Parliament of Fowls,16 in contrast to fashionable twentieth-century interpretations which, as in the case of the Wife of Bath, turn him into an advocate of marital reform, feminism avant la lettre, and even the mutual sharingness of the married state, none of which has a basis in fact. Every age has its own Chaucer. Generations of scholars have pointed out that the Wife is most “envoluped in synne”, to use the Pardoner’s phrase. The evidence brought to bear on the subject is thoroughly convincing. The Wife of Bath is revealed, throughout Prologue and Tale (not to forget the General Prologue), as someone who, in Augustinian/patristic terms and those of the fourteenth-century pulpit voice, is steeped in original sin or Concupiscence. She is, as Lowes charitably sums it up, “a magnificent abstract of the Deadly but Delightful Seven”.17 Trevor Whittock points out that the truth about the Wife of Bath lies in the fact that she is on the side of life.18 So she is, and on all sort 16

The Parliament of Fowls, ll. 78-84. This is admittedly part of his summary of the Somnium Scipionis, but the stanza’s sentiment, particularly its reference to God in line 84, is Christian and in no sense pagan. 17 Lowes, p 352. But what to make of such readings as “Chaucer’s achievement is to make one feel the essential innocence and beauty in the Wife of Bath” or “her sexual prodigality is in a curious way profoundly religious [...], an expression of life, and of gratitude to God who made her”? Trevor Whittock, A Reading of the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1968), pp 123-24. 18 Whittock, p 122.

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of counts, but most of all because she stands for life in this here, actual, everyday, all-encompassing world as the soul-corrupting force that tempts humankind away from their heavenly home. She is simply not on the side of Heaven. It is, perhaps, food for thought that the only medieval author who is truly capable of moving us directly, through some marvellous characterizations involving an intricate interplay of teller, tale and audience, should often turn out to be so misunderstood by us. Yet this is precisely the case where the Wife of Bath is concerned. Knowing, seeing, feeling that she stands for life and its joys, how can we even begin to appreciate that ultimately she stands for their absolute negation? Western society has moved away from its Christian roots to a notable degree. One may be proud of one’s achievement or a good deed done, look askance at the Joneses’ new convertible, enjoy a good meal at a chic restaurant, make love, be angry about politicians messing things up, stay in bed until lunchtime in the weekend and put something aside at interest for a rainy day. These are all normal aspects of modern life and it is difficult to imagine anyone finding much fault with this. Yet to Chaucer’s age they constitute sin on seven counts: Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lechery, Anger, Sloth and Avarice, even if in this shape they are largely venial. The point to be recognized is that they consitute sin all the same, reminding us that our frame of reference is greatly dissimilar to that of Chaucer’s. We have great difficulty in recognizing the symbolic and emblematic references in Hogarth’s work – less than three centuries away – and the farther we move from our own point of vantage the more problematic our interpretations become. Though we may still recognize a master’s hand, as some art will prove timeless, the artist’s frame of reference tends to be the more obscure as time goes by. For Chaucer’s century the catchword is surely mortality – Death – and its twin offspring: Carpe Diem and Carpe Deum. With Christianity still reigning supreme and the nightmare of the pestilences looming over all, we need not be surprised that the latter choice should predominate. It certainly does so in the Canterbury Tales, particularly through the affixation of the Parson’s Tale, which adds a religious gloss to the entirety of the stories. We, Chaucer’s modern and largely secularized descendants, however, lack the automatical instrumentarium whereby to recognize the Christian reference in all its various shades. This is why we shall briefly halt at some of the major points of

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the Church’s medieval doctrine of sin before taking a closer look at the Wife of Bath. The chief architect of the Seven Deadly Sins is St Augustine. The basis of all sin, he teaches, is Original Sin, the archetypal disobedience of Adam and Eve. As a result of the Fall all flesh is tainted with it and will remain tainted till the New Heaven and the New Earth shall come to pass. Original Sin, also known as Concupiscence or cupiditas and often identified with Inobedience, spells death – it is mortal sin. If it had not been for Christ and the grace he bought for mankind death would be man's ultimate lot. Christ’s sacrifice freed mankind from the guilt (culpe, as the Parson calls it) and from the finality of death but not from the frailty and mortality of the flesh. With the aid of the Church, as the instrument of Christ’s grace, and the grace itself which she may dispense through her sacraments, it is possible to combat the urgings of one’s inborn Concupiscence and gain a chance of redemption and everlasting grace.19 From Genesis are also drawn the basic stages that characterize Concupiscence. They are suggestion, delight (in the contemplation of sin) and consent of reason. In terms of the Fall they are the Serpent, Eve and Adam. The two initial stages constitute a pardonable form of sin: they are venial.20 The third stage is more than toying with the idea, as the spirit’s consent to sin is tantamount to its commission. It is Mortal or Deadly sin. Alternative divisions of Concupiscence are also possible. It may be classified as frailty, ignorance, and presumption; in this order they constitute sin against the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.21 The third and mortal stage is inextricably linked with sin in deed and sin in habit, which for the sake of convenience may be called its fourth and fifth stages. The commission of sin may be classified in all sorts of ways, as sins of the spirit and of the flesh, of commission and omission, of the tongue, of the heart, of the belly and the sexual organs. The most common classification in Chaucer’s day, however, is that of the Seven Deadly Sins. Of these the foremost is the sin of Pride, which is the root of all the other sins. This is actually the same thing as saying that they spring from Concupiscence, since Pride is synonymous to the Consent of Reason and the Presumption of the third stage of sinful19

Robertson, pp 73ff; Parson’s Tale, 331-336. Cf Parson’s Tale, 325-36. 21 Robertson, pp 73ff. 20

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ness. In their usual order the Seven Deadly, or Mortal, Sins are: Pride (Superbia), Anger or Wrath (Ira), Envy (Invidia), Sloth (Accidia), Avarice or Covetousness (Avaritia or Cupiditas), Gluttony (Gula), and Lechery or Lust (Luxuria).22 In actual practice we find a good deal of departure from this order. We need only take a look at the Parson’s Tale or Gower’s Confessio Amantis to prove the point. Both take Envy as their second Deadly Sin. The correspondence need not be accidental, in the light of Chaucer’s acquaintance with the Confessio Amantis, though on the whole Gower’s selection of sins is distinct from Chaucer’s. It is dissimilar, much narrower and it also includes a chapter on the Eduction of a King, reflecting continental practice known as Fürstenspiegel.23 There was ample flexibility as to the order and the emphasis that could be applied to the several Deadly Sins – the cardinal ones. This also applies, perhaps even more so, to the ordinal sins, the subclassifications of the various Deadly Sins, which we also find referred to as ordinals, branches or comites. Within any given treatise on the Deadly Sins all sorts of overlapping and duplication could occur and that in all degrees and with all sorts of frequency. The general tendency in Chaucer’s day was towards the scholastic system of classifying sin in fine detail, with all the repetition and overlapping this implied. This is the historical outcome of coinciding religious trends in the thirteenth century. Its renewed interest in pastoral care, whose origins are associated with the University of Paris and other academic centres, derived a major impetus from the “Great” Council of 1215.24 The subsequent demand for pastoral guidance in the shape of manuals coincided with the spread of Scholasticism, as it was the Schoolmen who really went to work on this.25 At the same time, as an interrelated phenomenon, the century saw the rise of two great orders of friars, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and it was these who were to become, the latter in particular, the great preachers and propagators of popular piety until their fourteenthcentury decline set in.26 We need only picture the Pardoner as the man 22

Lowes, pp 255ff; Newhauser, pp 190-93. Newhauser, p 83. 24 Margaret Jennings, The ars componendi sermones of Ranulph Higden, O.S.B. (Leiden, etc: Brill, 1991), p xxiv. 25 Newhauser, p 124. 26 Southern, Ch. 6 section III, pp 272-99. 23

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that he should have been – a worthy preacher – to get an idea to what great effect these itinerant clerics were capable of working and along what lines they did so. This also explains the overlapping tendencies among the various sorts of tractates that we encounter. Thus, the Pardoner preaches against cupiditas, illustrates this graphically with his Sins of the Tavern and follows it up with a terrifying exemplum. If he had been a proper friar and not the mercenary pardoner that he is, his object would have been to move his audience from attrition to contrition and help them make a clean breast of things. The thing to note is how closely preaching, sin and confession are thus associated, which explains why in so many treatises – including Gower’s and Chaucer’s – these matters are found together. Though we might be inclined to think otherwise, this scholastic attention to detail was meant to serve a practical purpose. Essentially any outline of the Seven Deadly Sins in their various subclassifications is a schematic representation of how sin was thought to affect people. To use the simile that we find from the Fourth Lateran Council onward, the Deadly Sins are like diseases, whereas their various comites are comparable to symptoms. Hence the Parson’s use of the word remedia when speaking of the means to combat sin. This makes – and this is how it was meant to be used – a treatise on the cardinal sins an instrument for spiritual therapy, which is exactly how we find them applied in the the Parson’s Tale. Actual practice must, of course, have been greatly different. In the disaster-stricken second half of the fourteenth century, which saw the decimation of clerical life in Britain, there cannot have been much chance of such surgical precision in everyday confession. Some of the great names in the field of the summae vitiorum are Alain de Lille, Hugh of Basevorn and John of Salisbury, but by far the most popular of them all, as attested by the wealth of copies and adaptations of his work, was the Dominican William Peraldus,27 who inspired not only Chaucer but his illustrious predecessor Dante himself. The Parson’s Tale If the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale are Chaucer’s condensed answer to the Confessio Amantis whose homiletic structure, 27

Newhauser, pp 91-92.

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confession and exposition of the Seven Deadly Sins they follow in their own fashion and the Wife herself Chaucer’s rendition of Amans confessing to all these sins, with a dash of Genius’ preaching thrown in, it is a logical thought that her confession should follow Gower’s discussion of sin as well. In other words, could Chaucer have based the Wife’s confession of sin on the list that we find in the Confessio? Insofar as the basic idea is concerned, the answer is affirmative. It is clear that his reinvention of the Wife of Bath is directly indebted to Gower and this naturally includes her confession of sin as a notion borrowed from the Confessio. Beyond this, however, the indications are negative. To start with, Gower’s Confessio is just a brief summa, a condensed sketch rather than a full-blown treatise. Then, the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale suggests that Chaucer’s feelings on sin did not coincide with Gower’s, though this may have been a duelling pose, and it is a logical assumption that there must have been further matters on which they disagreed. What we find instead is that Chaucer preferred to relate the Wife’s sinfulness to his own Parson’s Tale. The point is well-illustrated by a comparison of how Gower and Chaucer deal with Lechery. Gower comes up with just one species of this, which is the sin of incest that we find in his Apollonius of Tyre, and actually fails to come down against its commission. In the Wife’s case, Chaucer leaves no doubt that the brunt of his opprobrium is against her licentiousness as a married woman, with special emphasis on her adulterous ways. There is little meeting ground here with the Confessio, save as a prick against Gower’s Venus. The Parson’s Tale, on the other hand, is quite vocal on the subject of adultery and so comes far closer to the Wife. On a wider scale, we are to find that the Wife of Bath’s sins, large and small, are both more extensive than Gower’s enumeration and much better suited to the one provided by the Parson. The presence of occasional verbal echoes underlines this. These considerations go together well with what, in Chapter Two, appeared to be the chief function of the Parson’s Tale: key to the new plan and, more specifically, to the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner. There is furthermore an obvious parallelism between the Parson’s Tale and the Confessio on one hand (each is a sermon comprising a manual of confession, discussing penitence at the hand of an exposition of the Seven Deadly Sins) and, on the other, the prologues and tales told by the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner (each constituting a sermon, part of which is a

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confession of the Seven Deadly Sins). We have come across this before, noting their close association and the likelihood that here may lie the answer to the puzzle of the Parson’s Tale’s construction. It is generally accepted that the “Parson’s Tale is a sermon on Penitence, in which is embodied a long treatise, originally separate, on the Deadly Sins”.28 Formally, however, it is not so much a sermon as a manual of confession. This manual has been shown to derive from the Summa de poenitentia or Summa casuum poenitentiae by St Raymund of Pennaforte for lines 80-386 and 958-1080. The treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins is taken to be from William Peraldus’ Summa vitiorum and, to cite Benson, accounts “for a large part of lines 390955”. […] Parallel passages from the two summae were given by K.O. Petersen, The Sources of the ParsT, 1901. In her summary of intervening scholarship on the sources, Dempster in 1941 (S&A, 723-60) reproduced representative extracts from both summae as well as parallels from two manuals”.29 The case for Pennaforte looks straightforward but Benson paints too simple a picture of Chaucer’s debt to Peraldus. Rather than support Petersen, Dempster rejects any direct attribution to Peraldus, to the point of public disagreement with her general editor, W.F. Bryan: Peraldus’ treatise on the sins is thirteen times as long as Chaucer’s; for much of what Chaucer has there is no parallel in Peraldus either close or remote, and the parallel passages listed by Miss Petersen frequently occur in the two works in such different sequence and surroundings as to make derivation highly doubtful. The Summa vitiorum must be considered as the ultimate source of only a small part of the treatise on the sins in the Parson’s Tale.30

She specifies matters as follows, regrettably leaving out any remarks on Anger, Sloth and Gluttony: 31 Most of the versets in his section on pride and nearly all versets in his section on envy (remedies excluded) find parallels (though scattered, 28

Robinson, p 785. Benson, p 956. 30 Germaine Dempster, ‘The Parson’s Tale’, Sources & Analogues: 723-760, at 723 note 2. Bryan here notes that he would have preferred Dempster to follow Petersen less critically. The quotation is at 724. 31 Dempster, ‘ParsT’, p 724 note 3. 29

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 241 and some very remote [see Petersen, pp. 36-49]) in the corresponding tracts of Peraldus; but for lust only one third, and for avarice much less than one-third of Chaucer’s versets find in Peraldus any analogue, close or remote (Petersen, pp. 71-78, 66-70), though Peraldus’ chapter on lust is five times as long as Chaucer’s, and that on avarice twentytwo times.

So far, things are crystal clear. Chaucer’s debt to Peraldus is much smaller than it is usually made out to be and can only partly be traced to him. Obviously, then, the Parson’s treatment of sin must draw upon other sources as well. This is Dempster’s view, too: It is strongly suggested by important additions to the material derived from the summae, by several gaps and other traces of attempts to combine different plans, and it is confirmed by the existence of a vast late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Latin and vernacular literature of religious manuals similar in content to what we would suspect the source or sources of the Parson’s Tale to have been, and sharing with it a number of features foreign to the two summae: the loose planning and rambling exposition (Peraldus was very long, rarely rambling), the frequent tone of exhortation and appeal to sentiment as against the detached exposition in the summae, the larger space given to practical advice at the expense of patristic and biblical authorities or the discussion of canonical law, the more colorful and picturesque language – in brief, the adaptation of the genre to the needs and tastes of the laity and of the less-educated […] clergy.

Dempster uses her review here to propose some intermediary versions:32 “That intermediaries lie between the works both of St. Raymund and of Peraldus and the Parson’s Tale is hardly open to question”. As far as Pennaforte is concerned, this is a surprising statement and probably a matter of careless wording. She adduces not a single specific reason for posing an intermediary here and fails to address the matter further. On Peraldus, however, she is evidently right. Thanks to Siegfried Wenzel’s studies in particular, we have in the past decades moved a lot closer to Chaucer’s models for his composition of the Seven Deadly Sins and their remedies. There are still large gaps and it is quite likely that some of them will never be filled but Wenzel has produced an unmistakable source for the Parson’s remedies in the shape of a treatise called Summa virtutum de remediis anime, also briefly referred to as Postquam from its opening word, 32

Dempster, ‘ParsT’, pp 724-25.

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which covers between 70 and 75 percent of the Parson’s remedies.33 This treatise is not in any way based upon Peraldus. However, Wenzel has also come up with two further summae, respectively designated as Quoniam (two versions) and Primo (nine versions), that are condensations and adaptations of Peraldus along the more traditional lines of the Seven Deadly Sins, with some extraneous material woven into them. Both have independent textual correspondences with the Parson’s Tale, but Primo – which is basically a further condensation of Quoniam – is not only closest but is often bodily followed in the manuscripts by the Summa virtutum.34 This does not mean that the derivation of the Parson’s account of Deadly Sin has now been solved. As Wenzel notes, “significant parts of the Parson’s discussion of the Seven Deadly Sins are certainly not based on Quoniam or Primo as preserved in the manuscripts I have examined: primarily the section on Pride, but also portions of Wrath, Sloth, and Avarice”.35 As for the in toto composition of the Parson’s Tale, it is fair to say that the scholars, including Wenzel, remain largely undecided on the issue of Chaucer as the ultimate composer but are tending slightly in his favour.36 Our view, of course, is more emphatically so: without a Confessio-like tale dealing with sin and virtue along the lines of a manual of penance the chances of producing a successful Testament of Love are much diminished. Here, Chaucer’s need for a tale tailored to reflect the basic outline of the Confessio Amantis becomes a perfect indicator: it is far more likely that he should have been the ultimate composer himself, with the aid of various sources, than having serendipitously chanced upon any conjectural document capable of providing a complete answer to Gower. Within this same frame, much of the loose planning and rambling of versets allows itself to be explained by the exigencies of composing such a tale at short notice and shows us a familiar Chaucer who is not greatly concerned with the finer details but given to concentrating on the broad outlines of the writing at hand. 33

Siegfried Wenzel, Summa virtutum de remediis anime (Athens, GA: The Chaucer Library, U of Georgia P, 1984), p 27. Still, this is a mere fraction of the Summa: only 2.5 % (p 37). 34 Wenzel, Summa, pp 2-49. 35 Wenzel, ‘The Source of Chaucer’s Seven Deadly Sins’, Traditio 30 (1974): 351378, at 377. 36 The subject is well-covered by Richard Newhauser, ‘The Parson’s Tale’, in Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel eds. Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, vol I (2002; Cambridge: Brewer, 2003), pp 529-611, esp 530-36.

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Here is a brief outline of the composition of the Parson’s Tale: 75-315

prima pars penitentie: on the causes that ought to move a person to contrition (Pennaforte);

316-386

secunda pars penitentie: on the confession of sin (Pennaforte);

387-957

sequitur de septem peccatis mortalibus et eorum dependenciis, circumstanciis, et speciebus: on the Seven Deadly Sins (partly Quoniam and Primo; no clear source or sources for the rest) and their remedies (largely Summa virtutum);

958-1027

sequitur secunda pars penitencie: on the confession of sin (Pennaforte);

10281080

tertia pars penitencie: on the giving of satisfaction (Pennaforte).

The complicated construction of the Parson’s Tale and particularly its absentee sources mean that some avenues of exploring the relation between the Parson on one hand and the Wife and the Pardoner on the other must remain closed to us. Yet this may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. In the pages and chapters to come, we shall find that the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and the Pardoner’s Prologue show up their narrators as guilty of every sin in the Parson’s book that is possible for them to commit. This makes them major indicators that Chaucer was not drawing separately on the diverse sources that lie at the basis of the Parson’s Tale but on the Parson’s complete discussion of sins and remedies itself. Logic dictates as much. The existence of the Parson’s Tale demonstrates that Chaucer either assembled parts of several summae into a single manuscript himself or worked from one that already included these. It is also tantamount to proof that, at some time during the writing of the Canterbury Tales, he had the complete tale at his disposal. Also, it makes excellent methodical sense for him to have worked from a completed Parson’s Tale in order to outfit the Wife and Pardoner with the appropriate sins. The alternative of Chaucer throwing together several sources in the writing of the Wife of

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Bath’s Prologue and again in the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale is not only awkward, but effectively denies a – if not the – major reason why the Parson’s Tale was composed and included. While the Wife and the Pardoner confirm the role of the Parson’s Tale, since the sins to which they confess span the various considerable gaps separating it from Wenzel’s best efforts on Quoniam, Primo and Postquam, textual evidence to support this would be a welcome thing. Here we are fortunate. Such a study was made over a century ago by Emil Koeppel, as a demonstration that the Parson’s Tale was indeed written by Chaucer.37 Though not exhaustive, his effort is directed at establishing Chaucer’s authorship of the Parson’s Tale, a matter that was much debated at the time. In order to do so, he subjects Chaucer’s writings to a comparison with the Parson’s lines. He concludes that the Parson’s influence is strongest in the Pardoner’s Tale and cites for this a dozen instances where the verbal parallels are largely unmistakable.38 Surprisingly, without apparently realizing this himself, he actually also presents a good case for the Wife of Bath as well. He comes up with six parallel texts for her and in five other cases there is a great similarity of speech to be noted.39 In point of fact, Koeppel’s instances are not definitive, as there are more correspondences to be noted. All this provides firm support for assuming the creation of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner as we know them to have followed closely upon that of the Parson’s Tale. In addition, Lenvoy de Chaucer, so obviously associated with the Wife of Bath, contains another two straight references to the Parson’s Tale.40 These indications go to show that, as was argued on different grounds in Chapter Two, that the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner stand in a very special relation to the Parson’s Tale, the basic suggestion being that their prologues and tales were adapted to it at a time when it was freshly composed and still in the forefront of Chaucer’s mind. The Case for the Wife of Bath’s Sinfulness From her very first appearance in the General Prologue it is clear that the Wife of Bath is cast as a major sinner. Though it is a 37

Koeppel: 33-54. Koeppel: 39-41. Further reading comes up with another instance on p 43. 39 Koeppel: 41 (once), 42 (once), 43 (thrice) and 44 (once). Koeppel: 46. 40 See below, The Evidence of Lenvoy de Chaucer. 38

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reasonable assumption that her portrait there underwent various stages of development, it is likely that she was always cast as a latter-day Eve, thus making her an obvious choice when Chaucer decided to go in for a Testament of Love of his own and do away with her original tale. Others before have pointed out that she is the breathing incarnation of stock medieval anti-feminist preaching. Her finery echoes St John’s apocalyptic vision of the woman in scarlet, the Whore of Babylon, who is synonymous to the Adversary. Like suggestions are to be derived from the physiognomical detail that Chaucer supplies, from his remarks about her love life, and from Jankyn’s “book of wikked wyves”.41 In the more traditional terms of the Seven Deadly Sins her outstanding sins are Pride and Lechery, but note how in the General Prologue just a few strokes of Chaucer’s pen suffice to indict her on the counts of Pride, Anger and Envy as well. To which we should add Sloth, in the shape of non-compliance with the duties of a good and sincere churchgoer: In al the parisshe wif ne was ther noon That to the offrynge bifore hire sholde goon; And if ther dide, certeyn so wrooth was she That she was out of alle charitee. [GenProl, 449-52]

We are not the first to note that the passage about going to “offrynge bifore hire” is straight from the Parson’s discussion of the sin of Pride [407]. It is evident, therefore, that the Wife of Bath is “envoluped in synne”, even if critical opinion differs upon the exact sin(s) in question. The reason for this is obvious, in the light of my theory, which seeks to show that she is a compound of each and every one of the Deadly Seven. Thus, remarking on the wild variations and overlapping in the medieval classification of sin, Lowes points out that it is sufficent to note that Inobedience (Unbuxomness) appears under Pride, Sloth, Avarice, and Gluttony (Sins of the Tongue), and through its antitype Obedience, under Lechery, Wrath, and Envy; Detraction, under Pride, Envy, Wrath, and Gluttony (Sins of the Tongue); ‘Gruc41

See for instance Curry on such seemingly innocent features as her redness of face, which indicates that she is a “woman [who is] immodest, loquacious, and given to drunkenness”. W.C. Curry, ‘More about Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’, PMLA 37 (1922): 30-51, at 44.

246 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath ching’ or Murmuration, under Envy, Pride, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice and Gluttony (Sins of the Tongue); [...] Blasphemy, under Wrath, Pride, Avarice and Gluttony (Sins of the Tongue); Chiding, under Wrath, Pride, Envy, Gluttony, and Sins of the Tongue; Cursing, under Wrath, Envy, and Gluttony; Impatience, under Wrath, Pride, Envy, and Sloth.42

Though this is not Lowes’ exact point, the quotation essentially encompasses the measure of the Wife’s sinfulness. It is like a family tree: take one sin to start with and it branches out into all sort of directions. For our purposes, however, this is hardly sufficient nor a route that we can afford to take, for it implies too great a risk of arbitrariness. Our way lies closer to the views of Robertson and Makarewicz, who argue Chaucer’s indebtedness to patristic thought and sources in this place. Robertson’s notion that there is an exegetical level here which draws on the Church Fathers, particularly St Augustine, is in full accord with the tenor of this study. Makarewicz, independent of Robertson whose study she anticipates by some ten years, takes this idea one step further. The Wife of Bath’s maistrie stands for the inversion of caritas and hence for cupiditas. This sin , which we recognize as none other than concupiscence and original sin, is Disobedience, hence Pride, “the roote of alle harme”. It is from this perspective that Makarewicz traces the Wife of Bath’s involvement in the Seven Deadly Sins, her guideline being the notion that the various branches of Pride lead the sinner automatically down into other forms of sin.43 While this is essentially what is argued here, there are two points on which we diverge. First, while entirely correct theoretically, as Pride is the primal sin and all other sin necessarily springs from this source, Makarewicz’ classification of the Wife’s other sins as the outcome of comites of pride at work is too much of a short-cut to be satisfactory in the light of actual fourteenth-century practice with its sevenfold division and countless subdivisions. Second, while resorting 42

Lowes, p 255. A similar note is struck by Helen Cooper in The Canterbury Tales (Oxford: OUP, 1989), p 50, where she correctly notes that “a homiletic analysis of the Wife of Bath would include pride, wrath, immodesty, lust and curiositas – her ‘wandrynge by the weye’”. 43 Robertson, pp. 319-35; Sister Mary Raynelda Makarewicz, The Patristic Influence on Chaucer (Washington: The Catholic U of America P, 1953 ), pp 191-95. In this connection mention should also be made of Alfred Kellogg whose argument on the Pardoner comes quite close to what these two say: ‘An Augustinian Interpretation of Chaucer’s Pardoner’, Spec 26 (1951): 465-81.

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to the Church Fathers and medieval authors, she fails to lay any specifically Chaucerian links. Thus, she cites Hugh of St Victor on the matter of Pride and its branches. There is nothing wrong with his words on the subject – he is a major authority, after all – but one wishes that she had availed herself of the Parson instead. Since the Parson’s Tale is so emphatically there at the end of the Canterbury Tales, with its Seven Deadly Sins and all that they involve and ample patristic reference besides, why is it that Chaucer scholarship – as Makarewicz is not the only one – is so insistent on turning elsewhere and so unwilling to listen to the one person whom Chaucer presents as the purest and most authoritative voice of all? For these and other reasons, including a strong desire on my part to settle the issue of the Wife of Bath’s sins once and for all, her Prologue is subjected in this chapter to a thorough comparison with the Parson’s Tale. Our first step will be to discuss the structure of the Prologue, as this can be shown to be largely composed of blocks of sin of more or less equal length. Next, we shall deal with Emil Koeppel’s evidence, as well as some of my own, on its verbal debt to the Parson’s Tale. Then, we shall go through all the sins in the Parson’s catalogue and check off each of them against the Wife of Bath’s confession, which begins at line 193 of her Prologue. To complete this, there will be an inventory of all instances where the Wife admits, in the first person singular, to her sinning, which effectively gives us an abstract of her impenitent confession. This is perhaps a somewhat lengthy way of going about things but the outcome will not be unrewarding. Finally, with most of the results in, we shall take a look at Lenvoy de Chaucer and the light that it can shed on the situation. The Blocks of Sin in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue The first 162 lines of the Wife’s Prologue – the non-confessional part – are basically an extended tract on Inobedience. Her defence of serial marriage and the enjoyment of the marital bed-chamber is, in daring to go against the Church Fathers and biblical authority, proof of Pride in a wide range of manifestations, such as Inobedience, Arrogance, Inpudence, Elacioun, Inpatience, Contumacie, Presumpcioun, Surquidrie, Pertinacie and Janglynge. In much the same way, we come across the extremely lengthy passage on the Wife’s chiding, which covers lines 223 to 390, and the equally lengthy account of her

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warfare with Jankyn. It is therefore a notion worth exploring whether the Wife of Bath’s Prologue should have been constructed along more or less compartmentalized lines. In other words, could there be blocks within the Prologue that deal with specific Deadly Sins? While this is a lucid proposal, the actual results must be expected to be somewhat less clear-cut. This is easily demonstrated at the hand of lines 1 to 162. The entire passage is redolent with Pride, yet it functions at the same time as a running argument in favour of sexual licence for the Wife within the pale of marriage. This is against the Church’s teaching on marital conduct and involves evident elements of Lechery and Sloth. All the same, it is possible to identify a number of passages that may be identified as chiefly dealing with a specific deadly sin. Thus, outside the confession proper, there is the just mentioned passage in lines 1 to 162 which deals with Pride (which is what I term her hubris passage). Lines 195 to 222 are basically about the Wife’s obtaining lock-stock-and-barrel power over all her husbands. This gives us Avarice as the keyword, even if it also involves aspects of bullying and domination, which chiefly belong with the sin of Anger. Next is the already noted passage (lines 223-390) on chiding, or Anger and Envy combined. The Wife’s chiding (Envy) is inseparable throughout from her gruchchyng or murmuracion, which is typical of Anger. Indeed, so closely have they been fused by Chaucer that we are obliged to read them as an inseparable whole. This is well in accord with the Parson: “soothly, whoso hath envye upon his neighebor, anon he wole fynde hym a matere of wratthe, in word or in dede, agayns hym to whom he hath envye” [533]. From 391 to 450 the Wife returns to her tricks of exploiting her husbands, which is Avarice again. Then the emphasis shifts to the bedroom and shows us the Wife in the act of using her sexuality for gain and mastery, which gives us an undercurrent of Lechery and Pride. This is followed by a long exposition of her Lechery, lines 453 to 626, though this is interspersed with some brief moments when other matters are dealt with, such as the failure of her fourth marriage [WBP, 481-502] and her love of gossiping [WBP, 531-42]. Ironically, her fourth husband’s funeral is not extraneous here but a signal indication of her lecherousness: As help me God! whan that I saugh hym go After the beere, me thoughte he hadde a paire44 44

It is not really surprising that the next passage is all about Lechery. The Wife’s de-

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 249 Of legges and of feet so clene and faire That al myn herte I yaf unto his hoold. [WBP, 596-99]

Pride

0

100

Avarice

Wife of Bath's Prologue

200

Anger & Envy

300

Avarice

Directly upon this follows a very plain passage on Lechery, lines 600 to 626, which explictly deals with her Venerean aspects and conduct. Finally, there is the lengthy part that is covered by lines 627 to 787 and deals with Jankyn’s anger, which basically repeats her old husbands’ anger. Yet what it unmistakably stands for is the Wife’s Sloth – her refusal to behave along the lines that a proper wife is expected to behave. All the same, here, too, aspects of other sins shine through: it is her Pride that moves her to behave this way and, as Jankyn’s quotations about murderous and unchaste wives make abundantly clear, her Anger and her Lechery as well. The sole sin that is absent here is Gluttony. An impossible sin to begin with, it was fused by Chaucer with Lechery, in the shape of sexual appetit, for reasons that shall be discussed below.

400

Lechery

500

Sloth

600

700

800

Approximate distribution of sin by blocks in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue.

It is worth noting that four of the blocks on sin are of near equal length. Pride, Anger/Envy, Lechery and Sloth each cover approximately 150 to 160 lines. The odd one out is Avarice, which has fewer than 100 lines and is, moreover, split in two. The basic suggestion here is that Chaucer did not rewrite the Wife of Bath’s Prologue in any haphazard fashion but was working along the lines of a well-considered constructional scheme. As we shall see, this was further complemented by a considerable sprinkling of other sins throughout her Prologue, for such probable reasons as providing added emphasis, variety, verisimilitude and the already noted overlappingness of sin. The curious case of the split Avarice block serves as a belated piece of evidence on the original construction of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. It probably stems from the time when the Wife still told her scription of the appetizing Jankyn is lecherous and this is emphasized by the evident double entendre here.

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tale of the Merchant of St Denis, which is much concerned with the sins of Avarice and Lechery and probably had a prologue which involved only one marriage. Thus, the suggestion is that what are now two Avarice sections were originally one and that in refashioning the Prologue along the Parson’s lines, Chaucer interpolated Envy and Anger at an appropriate place and that this place happened to be at line 222. In good support of this, it is worth noting that the lines preceding and those picking up the theme of Avarice again produce an almost seamless fit:45 I governed hem so wel, after my lawe, That ech of hem ful blisful was and fawe To brynge me gaye thynges fro the fayre. They were ful glad whan I spak to hem faire. [WBP, 219-22] They were ful glade to excuse hem blyve Of thyng of which they nevere agilte hir lyve; Of wenches wolde I beren hem on honde, Whan that for syk unnethes myghte they stonde. Yet tikled I his herte … [WBP, 391-95]

The qualification “an almost smoothly running whole” refers of course to the italicized parts. Yet it is these which bear out the argument in a marked fashion. They could never have followed each other in this fashion, yet they are like the serrated line along which documents are torn in two. What we have here is a good clue that the conclusion of the first Avarice segment ends upon the same half-line that the second opens with. This can hardly be coincidence. In the graphic terms of crime fiction, here is the smoking gun. In point of fact, this finding agrees nicely with our earlier notion that lines 163-183 (the little clash with the Pardoner), 184-194 (the invitation for the Wife to tell a tale), 195-222 and 391-450 (her mercenary marriage), and some lines of her Prologue’s conclusion belonged to her original introduction, though not exactly in this order and in all likelihood differently worded here and there. The only thing to be added here is, possibly, the small section of the Lechery block in which she discusses her astrological predisposition for aggressive sexuality. This covers lines 605 to 626 and looks very appropriate to 45

Note the switch from they to he in line 395, which affirms my suggestion in Chapter Four that the original prologue dealt with just one husband.

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the two aspects that we may assume to have been typical of the original situation: avarice and lechery. Fundamentally, the four major blocks of sin allow themselves to be read as distinctive elements of Chaucer’s remake of the Wife’s Prologue. Their well-defined contours, their near-equal length and the Avarice matter make this assumption eminently possible. What is more, they are each of them indebted to St Jerome’s Epistola adversus Jovinianum, the opening block greatly and the others moderately so.46 As we have seen, Chaucer’s use of St Jerome provides an approximate date of 1390/91, which coincides with the start of the Testament of Love. And, unlike what our handbooks tell us, it is solely these blocks that can lay claim to this relative late date of writing. In our next chapter we shall encounter a similar block in the Pardoner’s Tale, which comprises the Sins of the Tavern and is also extensively indebted to the Adversus Jovinianum, to the exclusion of the rest of the tale. Here, as elsewhere, the situation at hand indicates a Chaucer who is greatly unlike the flighty and randomly engaged person that is sometimes painted. Instead, we find a revision of earlier writings along rational and methodical lines by someone obviously capable of carrying this out in a most satisfactory and near-invisible fashion. We are not the first to have discerned compositional stages in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. The contrast between her introduction, which seeks to refute authority or, rather, correct it along her own lines, and her marital confession, which seeks to replace it, has been noted frequently enough. Others, such as Robert F. Pratt have pointed out three main sections, to wit the hubris introduction, the marriages to the three “good” husbands and the two “bad” ones.47 A much better point is his observation that the three old husbands are so nondescript that they might as well have been one, which is exactly what I believe to have been the original situation.48 Charles Henebry favours three compositional stages in the marriage situation,49 whereby Jan(e)kyn started out as an apprentice, to be subsequently recast as a clerk boarding with the Wife and finally lodging with her gossip. What argues against this is that each of Jankyn’s manifestions coincides with the blocks on sin and hence with Chaucer’s rewriting of the Prologue 46

See Robinson’s and Benson’s Explanatory Notes, pp 698-702 and pp 864-72 resp. Pratt, esp. 50-51. 48 Pratt, 50-51. 49 Henebry, 147-61, see esp. 149-52. 47

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along Testament of Love lines. Also, Henebry’s argument runs counter to the blocks’ shared debt to the Epistola adversus Jovinianum, which indicates a more closely linked conception than he allows room for. A final point to note is how neatly the various blocks reflect the stages through which the Wife’s confession/sermon moves. The hubris block covers the stages of the Wife’s word and experience versus divinely inspired authority, the Envy-Anger block that we find within the Avarice fragments treats the marriages with her old husbands, the Lechery block coincides with the fragmented account that she gives of her fourth marriage and foreshadows her fifth, and the Sloth block is all about her fight with Jankyn in order to secure the “maistrie”. Koeppel’s Evidence After the blocks of sin we now enter the realm of verbal correspondences. For this we largely turn to Emil Koeppel, who was the first to analyse the verbal debt of some of the Canterbury Tales to the Parson’s Tale. Koeppel’s first instance is found in the Jeromian part of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, thus actually preceding her confession:50 Why sholde men elles in hir bookes sette, That man schal yelde to his wyf hire dette? [WBP, 129-30]

This comes from the Parson’s discussion of the remedies of lechery: “Another cause is to yelden everich of hem to oother the dette of hire bodies”. [940]. As a remedy, it is somewhat inadequate, for the Parson elsewhere explains that this rather seemingly venial sin is actually deadly, “eek whan he useth his wyf […] for the entente to yelde to his wyf the dette of his body” [375].51 The next correspondence noted is a well-known one: In al the parisshe wif ne was ther noon That to the offrynge bifore hire sholde goon. [GenProl, 449-50].52

50

While following Koeppel here, I have adapted his text to a more modern redaction. He bases himself on Morris-Skeat, whose edition I have been unable to trace. 51 This is my addition. 52 In the light of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue being silent on this particular aspect and the curious lack of a name for this “privee spece” of sin, I should not be surprised to learn that the reference to going to the offering before one’s neighbour should be one

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This we find as the quaintly-announced “privee spece of Pride, that […] desireth to […] goon to offryng biforn his neighebor” [407]. Then we have the unkind epithets that the Wife directs at her old husbands: olde dotard shrewe, olde dotard and sire olde fool [WBP, 291, 331, 357].53 These clearly echo the Parson’s reproof of lecherous old husbands practising oral sex: “and namely thise olde dotardes holours, yet wol they kisse, though they may nat do, and smatre hem”[857].54 Her other chiding, as found in her counterattack “Thou chidest as a feend” [WBP, 244], reminds us of the Parson’s statement that “ther is nothyng so lyk the develes child as he that ofte chideth” [630]. Her husbands’ complaint “that droppyng houses, and eek smoke,/ And chidyng wyves maken men to flee” recurs without the smoke as “An hous that is uncovered and droppynge, and a chidynge wyf, been lyke” [631]. Another proverb, quoted by Jankyn as “A fair womman, but she be chaast also,/Is lyk a gold ryng in a sowes nose” [WBP, 784-85], crops up in the Parson’s discussion of the thraldom and foulness of sin: “Likneth a fair womman that is a fool of hire body lyk to a ryng of gold that were in the groyn [snout] of a soughe” [156]. The Parson’s warning to “be ful wel war that thou be nat out of charitee” recurs in the Wife’s “so wrooth was she,/That she was out of alle charitee” [GenProl, 451-52]. Her remark that “Every wyght […]/That hath swich harneys as I to yow tolde” [135/36] is held by Koeppel to echo the Parson’s phrase “And swich manere harneys” [974] but seems to me also reminiscent of “This folk taken litel reward of the ridynge of Goddes sone of hevene, and of his harneys whan he rood upon the asse, and ne hadde noon oother harneys but the povre clothes of his disciples” [435], a correspondence not in Koeppel. “A wys wyf shal, if that she kan hir good,/Bere hym on honde of Chaucer’s own contributions, plucked from some unidentified source and vaguely parked here in the Parson’s Tale under an unspecified heading and possibly awaiting further polishing. Wenzel’s problems with the sin of Pride, which draws only marginally on Peraldus, only go to underscore this. The sin is not found in Peterson’s study of Peraldus: Wenzel, ‘Source’: 361-62. More generally speaking, the implicit understanding that reference to and quotation from the Parson’s Tale is a one-way affair is something about which I have my doubts. Within the permanent state of flux that seems to be typical of the writing of the Canterbury Tales, the Parson’s Tale may not just have been something to draw upon but also to put things in. 53 Koeppel only notes “olde dotard schrewe”. 54 The accompanying lines are more outspoken and leave little doubt on the subject.

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that the cow is wood” [WBP, 231-32] is taken by Koeppel to be an echo of “And somtyme grucchyng sourdeth of Envye; whan man […] bereth hym on hond thyng that is fals” [505]. Actually, there are other lines that are much more appropriate: “Right thus […]/Baar I stiffly myne olde housbondes on honde/[…]/And al was fals” [379-82].55 The Wife’s “moore harm than herte may bithynke” [WBP, 772] is close to the Parson’s “mo develes than herte may bithynke” [171]. Quite plainly, also, the description of the rape scene in the Wife of Bath’s Tale draws upon the Parson’s words. Just compare Of which mayde anon, maugree hir heed, By verray force, he rafte hire maydenhed. [WBT, 887-88]

and “Another synne of Lecherie is to bireve a mayden of hir maydenhede”[868]56 and the Parson’s confessional handbook (Sequitur secunda pars Penitencie), which enjoins the confessor to inquire “if the womman, maugree hir hed, hath been afforced, or noon” [974]. Some final correspondences, not given by Koeppel, are WBT 160-61: “Right thus the Apostel tolde it unto me;/And bad oure housbondes for to love us weel” and the Parson’s “Seint Paul seith: “[…] ye men loveth youre wyves” [634] and “as seith Seint Paul, that a man sholde loven his wyf as Crist loved hooly chirche”[928]. More interesting is the Wife’s description of the purgatory of her old husbands, none of whom was given any relief “til he had maad his raunson unto me” [WBP, 411], which is fittingly and nastily reminiscent of the Parson’s description of the fate of the damned: “they ne may yeve no thyng for hir raunsoun” [225]. Then there are the expressions by sleighte or force and murmur or grucchyng: Atte ende I hadde the bettre in ech degree, By sleighte, or force, or by som maner thyng, As by continueel murmur or grucchyng. [WBP, 404-06]

These are near-literal echoes of the Parson’s by force or by sleighte in his description of Theft [799] and his gruchchyng or murmuracion under Envy [499]. To find them combined so closely can hardly be coincidence, especially in the light of their formulaic nature. 55 56

Idem. Idem.

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Most interesting lines are found in these remarks by the Wife: [I] wered upon my gaye scarlet gytes [robe, mantle]. Thise wormes, he thise motthes, ne thise mytes, Upon my peril, frete hem never a deel. [WBP, 560-61]

They correspond strikingly with the Parson’s words on the damned in Hell. “Where been thanne the gaye robes …? Loo, what seith God of hem by the prophete Ysaye: that ‘under hem shul been strawed motthes, and hire covertures shulle been of wormes of helle’” [197-98]. The latter four instances and Koeppel’s lines about going to the offering, the old dotard epithets, the rape lines with their maugree hir heed, and possibly the combination of beren on honde and fals look like authentic echoes. The other correspondences fall largely into the category of proverbs and popular parlance, which makes them unreliable indicators: they could have come from all sort of sources, though we may sensibly note that the Parson’s words were within easy reach. If this fails to strike us as much of a result, it is nevertheless one that outstrips any of the other tales by far, with the sole exception of the Pardoner’s Tale. With the verbal correspondences so few and far between, some eight altogether, not counting the possibles, one wishes that the evidence were clearer. There is a plain debt to the Parson’s Tale yet it is rather meagre when held up against the great panorama of the Wife of Bath’s sinfulness. Thus, the situation is markedly reminiscent of our problems with the Confessio and it may well be that we must look for a similar solution. What the dearth of parallels and echoes shows is that after composing the Parson’s Tale57 Chaucer may never have returned to it, save perhaps for a very occasional reference, and worked from memory instead. This is by no means an unlikely supposition. We know that his age produced students who, from our perspective, were amazingly adept at memorizing58 and this is therefore a faculty that we can hardly deny Chaucer to have possessed. What is more, we get the same impression from his dealings with the Confessio Amantis. While his knowledge of the work is un57

One little word may conceal a lot. When I say “compose”, this may have included as many things as translating, incorporating and/or (re)arranging matters. 58 See for instance Coghill, p 13, who speaks of Chaucer’s capacity of “storing what he read in an almost faultless memory”.

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deniable, we know that he seldom comes up with any clear verbal echoes. There are some interesting instances in the Tale to support such a reading. There are cases when he is obviously quoting yet substituting a keyword (such as “groyn”, snout, by “nose”) or uses the echoed word in a different sense. All this is suggestive of little memory skips, tricks that the mind can play when one thinks to be citing a well-memorized text letter-perfect but slips up on one or two little details. In conformity with this, there is the consideration that the Pardoner’s Tale whose reconstitution we assume to have come immediately after the composition of the Parson’s Tale and before the creation of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, is more clearly indebted to the Parson and may owe this to a fresher memory. We ought to pay some little attention to the going to the offering correspondence. Its sentiment may have been commonplace in Chaucer’s day, yet its wording is too close to be coincidental. Its presence in the Wife’s portrait in the General Prologue strongly suggests revision under the colours of the Testament of Love, since this is what its source – the Parson’s Tale – is associated with. As such, it corroborates one of our other findings on this point, which is that its mention of her five marriages also indicate a revised and rewritten portrait, for they link up naturally with the story of Christ and the Samaritan as well as the types of marriage which we find in her sermon. The Wife of Bath’s Confession, or Her Sins Revealed Our first and chief sin, Pride or Superbia, encompasses an inward aspect, often designated as “inobedience”, and an outward one of vainglory. In some tractates the latter occurs as an independent Sin.59 The first seventeen comites treated by the Parson largely deal with the former type. The sin itself is “the general roote of alle harmes.” [388], in rather curious contrast with the Pardoner’s identical claim for cupiditas. Inobedient is he “that disobeyeth for despit to the comandementz of God, and to his sovereyns, and to his goostly fader”. [392].

59

Newhauser, p 187ff.

The Wife various sins reveal her as such a breaker of God’s commandments, her unabating struggle for “maistrie” as disobedient to her husbands, and her refusal to inform her parish priest [WBP, 531-32] as unwillingness to heed her “goostly fader”.

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 257 Avauntynge [393]: boasting of the good or evil that one has done.

As help me God, I laughe whan I thynke How pitously a-nyght I made hem swynke! But he was quit, by God and by Seint Joce! I made hym of the same wode a croce; Nat of my body, in no foul manere, But certeinly, I made folk swich cheere That in his owene grece I made hym frye For angre, and for verray jalousye. By God, in erthe I was his purgatorie… [WBP, 201-02, 483-89]

Hypocrisy [394]: hiding away what one is and showing oneself as one is not.

Her attendance of all sorts of religious functions, such as pilgrimages, processions and miracle plays, whereas her real interest lies in the lucky chance, her “grace” of coming across a “good felawe” [WBP, 543-84]. Perhaps the best illustration of her hypocrisy is her claim to being a jolly widow when she is a seasoned shrew, but there are many more.

Despit is is “desdeyn of his neighebor - that is to seyn, of his evene-Cristene - or …despit to doon that hym oghte to do” [395].

This sin is manifest in her treatment of all her husbands, particularly in her scolding and chiding and refusal to obey them.

Arrogance is self-exaltation, thinking “that he hath thilke bountees [virtues] in hym that he hath noght, or [...] sholde have hem by his desertes, or elles [...] that he be that he nys nat” [396].

Here the Wife’s claim of maistrie qualifies, just as her claim that, once gained, this makes her“as kynde/As any wyf from Denmark unto Ynde,/And also trewe.” This is not true for what happened in her first three marriages to the old husbands or her fourth or even her fifth. Even Jankyn – dead or alive – gets betrayed in the end.

Inpudence stands for a refusal to be ashamed of one’s sins [397].

This is found in her continuous boasting of the tricks she played upon her husbands, her shrewish treatment of them, her contacts with other men “al were [they] short, or long, or blak, or whit”.

Swellynge of Herte: malicious pleasure at the harm which one has done [398].

This coincides largely with the negative aspect of avauntynge.

Insolence [399] is contempt of “alle othere folk, as to regard of his value, and of his konnyng, and of his spekyng, and of his beryng”

This is pervasively present in all that the Wife confesses about her practice of browbeating her husbands, but also applies to the way that she deals with scriptural and ecclesiastical authority.

258 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath Elacioun is when the sinner “ne may neither suffre to have maister ne felawe” [400].

Maistrie: this sin defines the mentality behind the Wife’s fight for domination in all her marriages.

Inpacience, which includes Strif (contentiousness), is typical of the person who “wol nat been ytaught ne undernome of his vice, and by strif werreieth trouthe wityngly, and deffendeth his folye” [401].

Here is the archetypal “trouble and strife” of Cockney parlance. Obviously, this is the Wife to a tee, arguing as she does her own “folye” in the face of all biblical and patristic authority (“trouthe”).

Contumax [402] is “he that thurgh his indignacioun [rebellious wrath] is agayns everich auctoritee or power of hem that been his sovereyns”

This is another manifest aspect of the Wife’s fight against male authority.

Presumpcioun is the undertaking of something that one should not do or may not do. The latter form of this sin is also known as Surquidrie [403].

This holds good for the Wife’s theme of maistrie but is also applicable to her loose behaviour with all sorts of men, and in the way she deals with her husbands. Her wooing of Jankyn while still married is an excellent example of both.

Irreverence is not doing “honour there as hem oghte to doon, and waiten to be reverenced” [403].

I governed hem so wel, after my lawe, That ech of hem ful blisful was and fawe To brynge me gaye thynges fro the fayre. They were ful glad whan I spak to hem faire, For […] I chidde hem spitously. [WBP, 219-23]

Pertinacie “is whan man deffendeth his folie, and trusteth to muchel to his owene wit” [404].

All the Wife’s preaching is an illustration of this, which is logical in the light of her announcement of her theme when she cites experience as her guide. This much awaited experience is what we hear all about after the Pardoner’s intervention and is both a running defence of her folly and an unabated trusting in her own wit.

“To have pomp and delit in his temporeel hynesse, and glorifie hym in this worldly estaat” leads to Veyneglorie [405].

This agrees well with the picture that we have of the garishly bedecked Wife of Bath as we know her from the General Prologue. It is also to be deduced from her husbands’ complaints about her liking for outward show [WBP, 337-47]: Thou seyst also, that if we make us gay With clothyng, and with precious array,

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 259 That it is peril of oure chastitee; And yet - with sorwe! - thou most enforce thee, And seye thise wordes in the Apostles name: “In habit maad with chastitee and shame Ye wommen shul apparaille yow,” quod he, “And noght in tressed heer and gay perree, As perles, ne with gold, ne clothes riche.” After thy text, ne after thy rubriche, I wol nat wirche as muchel as a gnat. Janglynge “is whan a man speketh to muche beforn folk, and clappeth as a mille, and taketh no keep what he seith” [406]

The entire Wife’s Prologue is an illustration of this sin. She literally confesses to it in her struggle for maistrie with Jankyn, saying [WBP, 637-38]

A privee spece of Pride is the sinner’s exaction of deference, such as “goon to offryng biforn his neighebor” [407-08].

This anonymous sin is evidently a matter of Veyneglorie and ought to belong there. It is the Wife of Bath all over, since we recognize it from her part in the General Prologue, with its telltale choice of words.

Stibourn I was as is a leonesse And of my tonge a verray jangleresse

The rest of the Parson’s discussion of Pride deals with its trappings and manifestations among society’s upper crust. This encompasses Superfluitee of Clothynge and its scanty opposite – rather hilariously described as “the horrible disordinat scantnesse of clothyng [with] the wrecched swollen membres that they shew thurgh disgisynge” and “the buttokes [that] faren as it were the hyndre part of a she-ape in the fulle of the moone” [422-24], and other types of “superfluitee”, to wit, the overdone trappings of horses and retinues and rich partying. All this is Veyneglorie and has been dealt with. Interestingly but not surprisingly, there is a good test for us in the Parson’s words on the Remedium contra peccatum Superbie [47583]. Being more concise and to the point, it should bring to mind the Wife of Bath in several places or not at all. As it turns out, the first choice has it. The remedy is humylitee, or mekenesse, a quality which is entirely wanting in the Wife of Bath. He then sums up the three types of humility, namely “humylitee in herte; another humylitee is in [a man’s] mouth; the thridde in his werkes”[475-77], and all of them are, in the medieval manner, lovingly subdivided. In a sense they are a checklist whereby to make inventory of the Wife’s spiritual state:

260 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath

There are four “maneres” for humility of heart: whan a man holdeth hymself as noght worth biforn God whan he despiseth noon oother man whan he rekketh nat, thogh man holde hym noght worth whan he nys nat sory of his humiliacioun

false false false false

Then there is the matter of “the humilitee of mouth”, something very closely allied to the Wife of Bath and most applicable to her. Quaintly, as one of the three major remedies outlined by the Parson, why is it that its opposite, “pride of mouth”, hardly figures in the discussion of the various species of this sin that have just passed review? As it is, there are also “foure thynges” for a decent tongue: attempree speche humblenesse of speche whan he biknoweth [admits] with his owene mouth that he is swich as hym thynketh that he is in his herte whan he preiseth the bountee of another man, and nothing therof amenuseth [detracts]

false false false false

Finally, there is the “humilitee in werkes”: whan he putteth othere men biforn him to chese the loweste place over al gladly to assente to good conseil to stonde gladly to the award of his sovereyns, or of hym that is in hyer degree

false false false false

The only point where most of us would have said true is the one under “decent tongue.” Does not the Wife admit what is in her heart? The answer must be “no.” What the Parson refers to is humility of heart – the catchword here – and honesty in confession. The Wife’s confession, open-hearted though it is, is all about her impenitent Pride. Envy More than the other sins Envy (Invidia) opposes the Holy Ghost [485]. It is the sin that opposes all goodness and virtue. The Parson distinguishes two types, “hardnesse of herte in wikkednesse” and the intentional opposing of truth and “the grace that God hath yeve to his neighebor”[486].

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 261 Sorwe [envy] of Oother Mannes Goodnesse and of His Prosperitee [491]

Her manipulation of her old husbands into giving her “hir lond and hir tresoor” – though strictly Avarice – carries distinct overtones of this particular branch of Envy. It is also readily recognized in the Jankyn episode. Regretting very much ever having given Jankyn “al the lond and fee/That evere was me yeven therbifore” and hating him for his pious lectures (his goodnesse) she ultimately manages to manipulate matters in such a way as to bring about his submission.

Joye of Oother Mannes Harm [492]

This is more or less covered by the sin of Avauntynge.

Backbityng or Detraccion [493-98] is five-fold:

The Wife of Bath, being no mean backbiter, is plainly guilty of this sin.

a. praising one’s “neighebor by a wikked entente.”

Read “husband” for neighbour and a world of backbiting is opened up for us [WBP 386-402]: ... as an hors I koude byte and whyne. I koude pleyne, and yit was in the gilt, Or elles often tyme hadde I been spilt. Whoso that first to mille comth, first grynt; I pleyned first, so was oure werre ystynt. They were ful glade to excuse hem blyve Of thyng of which they nevere agilte hir lyve. Of wenches wolde I beren hem on honde, Whan that for syk unnnethes myghte they stonde. Yet tikled I his herte, for that he Wende that I hadde of hym so greet chiertee! I swoor that al my walkynge out by nyghte Was for t’espye wenches that he dighte; Under that colour hadde I many a myrthe. For all swich wit is yeven us in oure byrthe; Deceite, wepyng, spynnyng God hath yive To wommen kyndely, whyl that they may lyve.

b. malicious distortion of another’s words or actions.

It is easily recognized in the passage just cited and, to leave no doubt on this point, is a recurrent aspect of the Wife’s confession, such as here: Sire olde kaynard, is this thyn array? Why my neighebores wyf so gay? She is honoured overal ther she gooth; I sitte at hoom; I have no thrifty clooth. What dostow at my neighebores hous? Is she so fair? artow so amorous? [WBP, 235-40]

262 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath c. readiness “to amenuse the bountee of his neighebor” or, in modern English, “to disparage the good qualities of one’s fellow-Christian”. d. disparagement of one’s neighbour’s good qualities through negative comparison, as when saying “‘parfey, swich a man is yet bet than he’, in dispreisynge of hym that men preise”. e. agreeing and listening to “the harme that men speke of oother folk”.

This is a perfect alternative description of the verbal bullying that the Wife inflicts upon her old husbands in the various instances that she gives throughout her confession.

Gruchchyng or Murmuracion [499]

Present throughout lines 223-390, it is explicitly mentioned as one of her sins in WBP 404-06:

The Wife’s goode husbands, so called in spite of her preference for the two that caused her such trouble, are plainly of the kind that the Parson refers to. The passage just quoted is a good example, up to and including its reference to the literal neighbour, which is an unmistakable echo of the spiritual neighbour or fellow-man that the Parson speaks of. Here the Wife’s “conseil” with her cronies on her husbands’conduct qualifies well.

Atte ende I hadde the bettre in ech degree, By sleighte, or force, or by som maner thyng, As by continueel murmur or grucchyng. Bitternesse of Herte [509] stands for rancour.

This is what provokes the Wife of Bath into tearing three pages from Jankyn’s book of wicked women. It also pervades her account of her fourth marriage.

Discord [510]

Discord is characteristic of the Wife. As she herself testifies, she willingly sows discord in her marriages, both for gain and in order to blind her husbands to her infidelities. She also causes discord among the pilgrims (Friar and Summoner).

Scorn [510].

Everything and everyone that disagrees with her views get their portion. It is quite obviously present in her reaction to the Pardoner’s interruption.

False Accusation [511] is actually quite similar to Malicious Distortion.

The passage quoted in illustration of Malicious Distortion, telling how the Wife of Bath is wont to level spurious charges at her husband, is ample warrant that his sin is also present.

Malignitee [512-13] stands for injuring a person or his goods.

The Wife’s statement that she managed to cow her husbands “by sleighte, or force” fits the specifications. Even better, though strictly this is Anger motivating her, is the passage where she has her decisive fight with Jankyn [WBP, 788-93]: And whan I saugh he wolde nevere fyne To reden on this cursed book al nyght,

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 263 Al sodeynly thre leves have I plyght Out of his book, right as he radde, and eke I with my fest so took hym on the cheke That in oure fyr he fil bakward adoun.

The remedy against Envy [515-32] is not neatly catalogued like that of Pride. The Parson basically defines it as love of God and one’s fellow-man, including one’s enemy, and discourses on this subject for the duration of half a page. The Wife’s love of God we may entirely doubt, whereas her love of her fellow-men does not extend beyond the carnal and includes nothing remotely resembling Christian charity. Anger The third sin in the Parson’s catalogue is Anger (Ira), also known as Wrath and Ire. It is, in his definition, “wikked wil to been avenged by word or by dede”. This once again goes to show how thin the boundaries are that separate the various major sins, for clearly “malignitee”, which we have just discussed as a type of Envy, fits well into this definition. The Parson makes a similar observation when he says that “whoso hath envye upon his neighebor, anon he wole comunly fynde hym a matere of wratthe, in word or in dede agayns hym to whom he hath envye”[533], adding that Pride, too, can be the root of Anger “for soothly, he that is proud [...] is lightly wrooth”[534]. Curiously, Anger is the only sin that has a virtuous twin, namely righteous Anger “thurgh which a man is wrooth with wikkednesse and agayns wikkednesse” [539]. The sin itself has a venial version, hence excusable, when it is spontaneous [541-42] and a deadly one when it is not. It is the latter from which all further manifestations stem. Another and notable point is that of all the sins discussed by the Parson it is Anger that gets most of his attention. Pride, the mother of all sins, is accorded three and a quarter pages in Benson’s edition, with Avarice as a close runner-up with just under three, yet it is Anger which gets as many as five. A reflection, perhaps, of an age that was angry with the world at large? Premeditated Vengeance [543-44]

We find this in the Wife of Bath’s fourth marriage, where discord ruled their relationship. Her putting paid to her husband for his infidelity, being “in erthe [...] his purgatorie”, surely qualifies.

264 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath Oold Wratthe [562] stands for This is characteristic of her perennial war against a deeply rooted resentment. male-oriented and male-dominated society. The most obvious instance is doubtless the passage where she rends some pages from Jankyn’s book and deals him a good blow. Discord [562], this time defined as the forsaking of an “olde freend that he hath loved ful longe.”

It applies to the Wife’s fourth marriage, ruled by discord, which led to at least one lengthy parting of their ways. She left for Jerusalem, a separation that would have come close to lasting a year.

Werre [warring, 563] is some- This is simply a more intensive form of “malignthing that seems to mean act- itee”and requires no further comment. ive hostility and includes “every manere of wrong that man dooth to his neighebor, in body or in catel” Manslaughtre or Homycide [564-579] I. Spiritual Manslaughter [565-569]: a. hate b. backbiting c. evil counsel as to raising wrongful “custumes and taillages” d. withholding or reducing wages

Absent Only figuratively present in terms of the marriage debt:

e. usury f. Withholding alms

[Not] til he had maad his raunson unto me Wolde I suffre hym do his nycetee. [WBP, 411-12] Absent Absent

II. Bodily Manslaughter60 [570-79]: a. commissioning or advising someone’s execution61 b. unnecessary killing c. accidental manslaughter

I hate hym that my vices telleth me. [WBP, 662] This has already been dealt with under Envy.

Absent Absent Absent

60 Strangely, the most obviously evil sort of manslaughter, premeditated murder is wanting. Yet it is precisely a murderous Wife of Bath that we find proposed by some Chaucer scholars, see Chapter Seven. The outline that we find here in our present discussion does not make such murderousness likely. 61 The Parson also discusses lawful execution here, which is not sinful.

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 265 d. “if a womman by negligence overlyeth hire child in hir slepyng” e. contraception and abortion f. coitus interruptus g. accidental miscarriage h. infanticide “for drede of worldly shame”

Absent

Absent Absent Absent Absent

Blaming God for One’s Own We find this in WBP, 401-02: Faults and Despising God and all the saints [580]. Deceite, wepyng, spynnyng God hath yive To wommen kyndely, whil that they may lyve. Irreverence Towards the Sacrament of the Altar [582]

We know it is there, as the Wife’s spiritual attitude towards church ritual is eminently clear from the General Prologue. Here the reference is likely to be to confession, since this what the next sin is also about. This is incorporated in her remark that her parish priest was not kept well informed about what went on in her heart. [WBP, 530-32]

Attry Angre [583-85] is the reaction of those who are sharply reproved in their confession and symptomatic of it is that such a person will find all sorts of excuses, such as “he dide it for his youthe; or elles his compleccioun [temperament] is so corageous [ardent]… or elles it is his destinee, as he seith, unto a certein age”.

We recognize here the Wife’s reminiscences of her wild youth (“And I was yong and ful of ragerye...”) and even more so her astrological exposition on the working of Venus and Mars upon her activities:

Swearing [587-602]

This is found some thirty times. “By God”,“God (it) woot” and “As help me God” are encountered most often, and there is a wide range of others. With the sole exception of the Host, there is no one among the pilgrims who swears so much and with such gusto.

Another sort of swearing is the Casting of Spells (“thilke horrible sweryng of adjuracioun and conjuracioun”), which also includes all sort of dabbling in superstition and the occult, even though most of them bear not the slightest

The Wife of Bath avails herself of her “dames loore” when wooing Jankyn. She talks of enchantment and comes up with dreams and dream symbolism [WBP, 575-84]. True, the dream which she mentions was made up by her, yet her activity in this matter and in “othere thynges moore” and persistently so (she says “ay”, always) ought to be sufficient demonstration that that she belongs among the dealers in the occult

Venus me yaf my lust, my likerousnesse And Mars yaf me my sturdy hardynesse; Myn ascendent was Taur, and Mars therinne. Allas, allas! That evere love was synne! I folwed ay myn inclinacioun By vertu of my constellacioun. [WBP, 611-16]

266 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath relation to the spoken word [603-07].

whom the Parson inveighs against as being “acursed, til they come to amendement” [606]

Lying [608-11]

Her dream of Jankyn is a case in point, yet its most frequent and flagrant appearance is in the description of how she fooled her husbands, what with her nightly escapades under colour of keeping an eye on them and her “innocent” flirtation with Jankyn. Needless to say, the entire confession is a demonstration of how she pulled the wool over her husbands’ eyes.

Flattery [612-18]

Of wenches wolde I beren hem on honde, Whan that for syk unnethes myghte they stonde. Yet tikled I his herte, for that he Wende that I hadde of hym so greet chiertee! [WBP, 393-96] I bar hym on honde he hadde enchanted me. [WBP, 575]

Cursing [619-21]

The clearest case is in the final malediction of “olde and angry nygardes of dispence” in the Wife’s Tale, which makes quite clear that she is guilty of this sin. In her confession proper similarly malicious imprecations of her old husbands are found: With wilde thonder-dynt and firy levene Moote thy welked nekke be tobroke! [WBP, 276-77] Jhesu shorte thy lyf! [WBP, 365]

Chiding [622-34]

A most characteristic vice: the Wife chides her husbands continuously, the bedroom not excluded, for – as she says – “There wolde I chide...” Her liking for epithets such as “dotard”, “sire shrewe” and the like are in full accord with the Parson’s words. Note, too, how her old husbands themselves reproach her: Thou seyst that droppyng houses, and eek smoke, And chidyng wyves maken men to flee Out of hir owene houses… [WBP, 278-80]

Scorn [635-38]

This has already been dealt with under Pride. The Wife’s continuation of the above quotation – “a! benedicitee! What eyleth swich an old man for to chide?” – is a good illustration of the scornful way in which she deals with her old husbands. [WBP, 235-378]

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 267 Evil Counsel [639-41]

The Wife’s preaching of “maistrie” and the sexual lures which accompanies this are a good instance.

Discord [642-43]

This sin has already been dealt with twice.

Double Tongue: speaking “faire byforn folk, and wikkedly bihynde” or pretending to “speeke of good entencioun, or elles in game and pley, and yet [speaking out] of wikked entente [644]

The latter half of this sin qualifies [WBP, 318-20]:

Defamation [645] stands for the betrayal of confidences.

This has a very clear place in the Wife’s confession. It is something that she has gladly committed:

Thou sholdest seye, “Wyf, go wher thee liste; Taak youre disport, I wol nat leve no talys. I knowe yow for a trewe wyf, dame Alys.

With my gossib, dwellynge in oure toun; God have hir soule! Hir name was Alisoun. She knew hyn herte, and eek my privetee, Bet than oure parisshe preest, so moot I thee! To hire biwreyed I my conseil al. For hadde myn housbonde pissed on a wal, Or doon a thyng that sholde han cost his lyf. To hire, and to another worthy wyf, And to my nece, which that I loved weel, I wolde hand toold his conseil every deel. And so I dide ful often, God it woot, That made his face often reed and hoot For verray shame, and blamed hymself for he Had toold to me so greet a pryvetee. [WBP, 529-42] Manace [646] is the same thing as threatening others.

The Wife of Bath’s unabating efforts at cowing her husbands surely qualify, as do lines 348 to 361, particularly the final five: Sire olde fool, what helpeth thee to spyen? Thogh thou preye Argus with his hundred yen To be my warde-cors, as he kan best, In feith, he shal nat kepe me but me est; Yet koude I make his berd, so moot I thee!

Idle Talk [647] is essentially no more than a social chat or a bit of gossiping, “withouten profit of hym that speketh tho wordes, and eek of hym that herkneth tho wordes”. As

There is entirely too much to the Wife’s confession that is not to the point but simply seems to stem from her love of talking, an observation borne out by the extreme extreme length of the Wife’s Prologue and her subsequent digressions on Friars, looselipped wives and even, one one feels, gentilesse.

268 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath such it is a venial form of sin, yet the speaker should earnestly beware. It overlaps with Garrulity Janglynge [649-50]

This sin has already been dealt with.

Japerie [651-52], clowning or fooling around, makes “folk to laughe at [this, as] at the gaudes [=pranks] of an ape”. Its evil is in the fact that just so “conforten the villeyns wordes and knakkes [=tricks] of japeris hem that travaillen in the service of the devel”.

Interestingly and fittingly, this is precisely what happens at the beginning and the ending of the Wife’s confession, in the very form of laughter at her words and in the very in shape of two who do so labour and toil in the devil’s service, the Pardoner and the Friar.

The remedy for Anger consists of three virtues: Mansuetude or Debonairetee [meekness or gentleness], Pacience or Suffrance, and – as a final flowering of the latter – Obedience to Christ [654-676]. Not surprisingly, none of these are aspects of the Wife of Bath’s spiritual make-up. Of all persons she is not, in any way, a patient Griseld. Sloth The fourth deadly sin is Sloth or Accidie (Accidia), as the Parson calls it. It stands for “anoy of goodnesse and Ioye of harm” [678] and springs from bitterness of heart, which in its turn stems from Anger and Envy [677]. Negligence and evasion of duties are the catchwords here, es pecially in matters spiritual. Surprisingly, the Wife of Bath whom we do not see as a slothful person turns out to be much given to this sin. Contrariness [687] is being “anoyed and encombred for to doon any goodnesse”.

This overlaps with various sins that we have already encountered, as should be clear from the following and familiar extract: Deceite, wepyng, spynnyng God hath yive To wommen kyndely, whil that they may lyve. And thus of o thyng I avaunte me: Atte ende I hadde the bettre in ech degree, By sleighte, or force, or by som maner thyng, As by continueel murmur or grucchyng. [WBP, 401-06]

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 269 Slouthe [688-90], our We encountered this in another familiar passage where modern Sloth, stands for the the Wife mentions that her “gossip” evasion of penance and, other forms of hardship. ... knew myn herte, and eek my privetee, Bet than oure parisshe preest, so moot I thee! [WBP, 531-32] Foregoing Good Works [691-92]. This comes down to dreading any effort of undertaking them because this is such hard work. Its shadow side is Persistence in Sin because this is so much easier.

The above quotation serves very well here, as does the admission [WBP, 386-88] that

Despair of God’s mercy, Wanhope [693-705]. A damnable sin, as it may lead to everything that is evil, “so perilous that he that is despeired, ther nys no felonye ne no synne that he douteth for to do, as shewed wel by Judas” [696].

Absent. Though the Wife of Bath is in no such state of mind, the germs of this are implicitly present, as is starkly epitomized by her spiritual status and the ultimate outcome of all her undertakings.

Sompnolence or “sloggy slombrynge”

Absent. This is far removed from the Wife’s energetic nature.

Necligence or Reccheleesnesse “that rekketh of no thyng” [710-13]

This is a most Wifely sin that crops up in many places such as WBP, 205-06, 615 and 622-23 :

... as an hors I koude byte and whyne. I koude pleyne, and yit was in the gilt, Or elles often tyme hadde I been spilt.

Me neded nat do lenger diligence To wynne hire love, or doon hem reverence. I folwed ay myn inclinacioun. I ne loved nevere by no discrecioun, But evere folwede myn appetit Ydelnesse [714-17]

Myn housbonde was at Londoun al that Lente; I hadde the bettre leyser for to pleye, And for to se, and eek for to be seye Of lusty folk. What wiste I wher my grace Was shapen for to be, or in what place? Therfore I made my visitaciouns To vigilies and to processiouns, To prechyng eek, and to thise pilgrimages,

270 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath To pleyes of myracles, and to mariages, And wered upon my gaye scarlet gytes. WBP, 550-59] Tarditas [718-19] is the folly of postponing one’s submission to God until it is too late. “And this vice comth of a fals hope, that he thynketh that he shal lyve longe”.

This fits the Wife of Bath. Age has not brought about her conversion to the ways of God and Christ. Instead, she clings with all her might to her earthly pleasures :

Lachesse or indolence [72021] really stands for the sin of leaving one’s work unfinished or giving up in the face of difficulty.

It is not an outstanding sin on the Wife’s part but, strictly speaking, is what she guilty of by refusing to be a good wife, as in the familiar lines [WBP, 205-06]:

But age, allas, that al wole envenyme, Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith. Lat go. Farewel! The devel go therwith! The flour is goon; ther is namoore to telle; The bren, as I best kan, now moste I selle; But yet to be right myrie wol I fonde. [WBP, 474-79]

Me neded nat do lenger diligence To wynne hir love, or doon hem reverence.

The sin of Cooldnesse “that For wynnyng wolde I al his lust endure, And make me a feyned appetit. [WBP, 416-17] freseth al the herte of a man” [722], which seems to indicate frigidity. Undevocioun [723-24] is all On this point there is the parish priest who was not about letting devotional kept well-informed on the Wife’s spiritual state. Bematters slide. yond this, there is her manifold and active commission of sin throughout all that she tells, which identifies her as one of those who “ne heere ne thynke of no devocioun, ne travaille with [her] handes in no good werk”. Tristicia or Worldy Sorwe [725-27] is the intensified state of Wanhope that leads to suicide.

Absent. Vide the Wife’s active participation in the pilgrimage and her high hopes of a palatable young replacement of Jankyn, this is a stage of sin that she is not yet ready for.

The Parson’s remedy for Sloth [728-38] provides no special new insights into the Wife of Bath. It is Fortitude, with such offspring as great Courage, Faith, Hope in God, Munificence and Constance. Fortitude and Courage are aspects of the Wife, though in a perverse cause, whereas the other virtues are obviously wanting.

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Avarice “Radix Malorum est Cupiditas” is what the Pardoner preaches and so does the Parson, though in more familiar terms: “the roote of alle harmes is Coveitise.” As it is, the Parson discerns two main classes, Covetousness and Avarice (Cupiditas and Avaritia). The former is to “coveite swiche thynges as thou hast nat,” the latter “for to withholde and kepe swiche thynges as thou hast, withoute rightful nede” [744]. The Parson’s subsequent excursion into Avarice is largely about social evils, particularly the extortionate practices of the nobility [“thise harde lordshipes”] and their ultimate rebuttal by recourse to the familiar late fourteenth-century slogan that lord and serf alike are the offspring of Adam [761-62]. Dishonesty among merchants is also discussed at some length. The Parson’s discussion here is all a bit of a jumble. So far as it is possible to make out, this is what generally constitutes Avarice: Greed is “for to purchacen [obtain, win] manye erthely thynges” [741-42].

Here is a a sin easily discerned in the Wife’s desire for the possessions of her husbands, who “hadde [her] yeven al hir lond”, for the “raunson” which they had to pay to her before getting any fun in bed, and the “gaye thynges fro the fayre”.

Its other aspect is a Desire of Scientific Knowledge and of Fame [743]

Absent.

Thraldom [752-776] is something that we would be inclined to call slavery or enslavement. It belongs with the extortionate practices of the ruling classes and as such it is presented.

Much that we find here is perfectly applicable to the Wife of Bath’s contrary doctrine of maistrie whereby the husband is both “dettour” and “thral”. 62 Thus, when mention is made of extortion and “raunsonynge” of bondsmen, how can we fail to be reminded of the Wife’s own extortionate practices or the “ransoun” that her husbands were forced to pay?

Simony is the buying and sell- The Wife of Bath’s surreptitious preaching of a sering of “thyng espiritueel, that mon for blatantly secular purposes arguably constiis, thyng that aperteneth to the tutes just such a case of simony. 62

Thraldom is further defined as primarily the result of sin and nothing related to any inferiority of birth or breeding. Here and elsewhere, such as later in the Wife of Bath’s Tale when gentilesse is discussed, there is a persistent implication that accompanies Chaucer’s use of thral and this is one of being dragged down and used. In point of fact, what we see effected by the Loathly Lady in the Tale is a clever reversal of roles: she starts out by presenting herself as a “thrall” and in the end manages to turn her knight into one (see Chapter Seven).

272 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath seintuarie of God and to cure of the soule” [780-84]. Flesshly Simony is “whan men or wommen preyen for folk to avauncen hem, oonly for wikked flesshly affeccioun that they han unto the persone”[785]

The Wife’s words to Jankyn during their Lent dalliance (her purveiance), telling him that he should marry her if her husband should die is a clear instance.

Hasardrie and “its apurtenaunces”[793]: almost all of its aspects, such as Chiding, Hate, Mysspendynge of Tyme (“Ydelnesse”) and Manslaughter, have passed review. The only ones that we have not yet dealt with are Hasardry itself, Deceit, Blasphemy (“alle ravynes, blasphemynge and reneiynge of God”) and “Waste of Goodes.” Hasardrie

This is not present in the strict sense of the word. All the same, we recognize in the Wife a “hasardour” with a liking for the tavern life and a gambler’s instinct [WBP, 457-59]: How koude I daunce to an harpe smale, And synge, ywis, as any nyghtyngale, Whan I had dronke a draughte of sweete wyn! I koude pleyne, and yit was in the gilt, Or elles often tyme hadde I been spilt. [WBP, 387-88]

Deceit is not in any way specified by the Parson.

We find it literally in the Wife’s claim: Deceite, wepyng, spynnyng God hath yive To wommen kyndely, whil that they may lyve. [WBP, 401-02]

The “ravynes, blasphemynge and reneiynge of God” refer to various degrees of using the Lord’s name in vain: Swearing, Cursing and Blasphemy. Of these, Blasphemy is the only one that we have not yet encountered.

The most recognizable instance of blasphemy is the malediction at the end of the Wife of Bath’s Tale [WBT, 1261-64] when she prays that ... Jhesu shorte hir lyves That noght wol be governed by hir wyves; And olde and angry nygardes of dispence, God sende hem soone verray pestilence. In the Wife’s actual confession part of the same malediction is found: “Jhesu shorte thy lyf!”

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 273 Waste of Goodes (this partly overlaps with Malignitee)

This is shown by her love of luxury and, literally, demonstrated by her act of destroying Jankyn’s book.

Lying [795]

This has already been dealt with.

False Witness [796-97]

This occurs with the Wife at various moments when she is obliged to hoodwink her husbands: Lordynges, right thus, as ye have understonde, Baar I stifly myne olde housbondes on honde That thus they seyden in hir dronkenesse; And al was fals, but that I took witnesse On Janekyn, and on my nece also. [WBP, 379-83]

Perjury [795] is like False Witness, the chief difference being that it takes place under oath.

It is found a few lines later: I swoor that al my walkynge out by nyghte Was for t’espye wenches that he dighte; Under that colour hadde I many a myrthe. For al swich wit is yeven us in oure byrthe; Deceite, wepyng, spynnyng God hath yive To wommen kyndely... [WBP, 397-402]

Theft [798-802] is twofold. One form that it takes is corporal. As such, it stands, among other things, “for to take thy neighebores catel [property] agayn his wyl, be it by force or by sleighte”.

The Wife’s own choice of words indicts her upon this point [WBP, 404-05]: Atte ende I hadde the bettre in ech degree, By sleighte, or force, or by som maner thyng... And what she means by “the bettre” is made abundantly clear a few lines later: I wolde no lenger in the bed abyde, If that I felte his arm over my syde, Til he had maad his raunson unto me; Thanne wolde I suffre hym do his nycetee. And therfore every man this tale I telle, Wynne whoso may, for al is for to selle; With empty hand men may none haukes lure. For wynnyng wolde I al his lust endure, And make me a feyned appetit. [WBP, 409-417]

Spiritual Theft [802-03] is sacrilege, in the shape of either desecration of holy places through any sort of violence or the commission of

It is arguably true that by actively engaging in preaching the Wife does in fact infringe upon the rights of the Church. As for the commission of sin in church, though the Wife stands convicted by her portrait in the General Prologue, the only thing in

274 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath sin within their confines or taking away “falsly the rightes that longen to hooly chirche”. This latter aspect is one of the sins of “thise harde lordshipes” that we have come across before.

her confession to be associated with this is her boastful admission that her confessor was not exactly kept well-informed of what went on in her heart.

The Parson’s final word on spiritual theft is worth thinking about. “Pleynly and generally, sacrilege is to reven [steal, take away] hooly thyng fro hooly place, or unhooly thyng out of hooly place, or hooly thing out of unhooly place” [803]. In this definition, the Wife’s sinfulness is soon appreciated. Through the medium of preaching, a holy thing, she endeavours to make off with another holy thing, the sacrament of marriage, which was instituted in the beginning of time and recorded in the holiest of places and repository of the words of God and Christ, that is, Holy Bible, and turn it into an unholy mockery. In doing so, she goes one up on the Parson by rejecting divinely instituted order in favour of female perverseness for this is putting “unhooly thyng” in the place of what is holy. The “relevacio” of Avarice is Misericorde, which is essentially the performing of charitable works [804-17]. Though not exactly charitable, the Wife of Bath is not so much a miser as a coveter, so that the Parson’s words here largely fail to apply to her, with the exception of his final lines. Read she for he and the passage instantly reminds one of the Wife: Certes, he leseth foule his good, that ne seketh with the yifte of his good nothyng but synne. He is lyk to an hors that seketh rather to drynken drovy or trouble water than for to drynken water of the clere welle. And for as muchel as they yeven ther as they sholde nat yeven, to hem aperteneth thilke malisoun that Crist shal yeven at the day of doom to hem that shullen been dampned [815-17].

Gluttony The sixth sin is Gluttony or Gula. Among the other looming Deadly Sins this is a minor yet supposedly venomous one, since it is associated with Adam and Eve’s forbidden fruit and hence one that makes a person most susceptible to the Devil’s promptings. Gluttony is “unmesurable appetit to ete or to drynke” or contributing to this [818]. A glutton “may no synne withstonde”, for he is necessarily “in

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servage of alle vices, for it is the develes hoord ther he hideth hym and resteth” [821]. Theory and practice are plainly at odds here, as its various manifestations range from Drunkenness, Fuddle, Memory Blackout, Distemper and Bad Table Manners – all of which sound venial (forgivable in terms of salvation) rather than mortal. In fact, gluttony is a ridiculously petty sin in terms of eternity. Imagine the Deity sentencing a soul to the fire everlasting, just because “whan a man devoureth his mete, [he] hath no rightful manere of etynge” [825] and fails to be properly contrite on this point. The Parson’s inclusion of St Gregory’s specification of Gluttony is no less ingenuous. They are: “etynge biforn tyme to ete”, epicurism, immoderation, elaborate dressing of food, and greedy eating. Together, these are “the fyve fyngers of the develes hand” [828-30]. In the light of the meagreness and pettiness of this sin it is no surprise to find Gluttony to be little more than a token sin in the Wife of Bath’s portrait, something on which Chaucer agrees with Gower, who distinguishes just three comites in his Confessio. Though she is obviously not averse to the more than occasional drink, and hence guilty, none of the various subsidiary types of sin are very much applicable to her. “As evere moote I drynken wyn or ale”, she admits, which is clear even if this is a bit of a stock phrase with several pilgrims. Later on she describes how well she could dance and sing when she “had dronke a draughte of sweete wyn”. This is clearly somewhat of an understatement, since in the same breath she makes clear that she enjoys a good bit of imbibing: Metellius, the foule cherl, the swyn, That with a staf birafte his wyf hir lyf, For she drank wyn, thogh I hadde been his wyf, He sholde nat han daunted me fro drynke! [WBP, 460-63]

The final line here makes clear that she is not one to give up drink willingly, whereas the rest of the passage, which is from Valerius Maximus, plainly hints at Jankyn’s book of wicked women and underlines that this was one of the vices that he reproved her for. This is further emphasized when, referring to herself, she remarks that “in wommen vinolent is no defence.” Her “vinolence” may include Drunkenness [822], which seems to be hinted at by her admission that it led to her lecherous behaviour – “on Venus moste I thynke”. This is the

276 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath

condition that the Parson seems to refer to under Fuddle, when “dronkeness bireveth [a person] the discrecioun of his wit”, which finds an echo in her admission that she “ne loved never by no discrecioun”. This is where the Wife’s Gluttony seems to end. Yet this will not do. There is far too much gula in the Wife’s self-portrait for this to be all, an observation that is borne out by the frequent reference to her voraciousness through words like “appetit”, “coltes tooth” or “likerous mouth”. However, in almost every instance we find her appetite to be a sexual thing rather than a matter of eating and drinking. Evidently, Chaucer was sufficiently unhappy with the Parson’s classification of Gluttony to look around for another way to incorporate it to some effect. Thus he added a firm dash of Lechery to some of the sins under Gluttony. Theoretically, there is no great objection to this, for as the Parson says – and it may well be this that inspired Chaucer or, alternatively, why he himself may have inserted the remark – “thise two synnes been so ny cosyns that ofte tyme they wol nat departe” [836]. As it is, there are five passages in the Wife’s confession where we find the two combined, each time accompanied by the telltale presence of a catchword denoting appetite: For wynnyng wolde I al his lust endure And make me a feyned appetit. [WBP, 416-17] And after wyn on Venus moste I thynke, For al so siker as cold engendreth hayl, A likerous mouth moste han a likerous tayl. [WBP, 464-66] He was, I trowe, twenty wynter oold, And I was fourty, if I shal seye sooth; But yet I hadde alwey a coltes tooth. [WBP, 600-02] Gat-tothed I was, and that bicam me weel; I hadde the preynte of seinte Venus seel. As helpe me God, I was a lusty one, And faire, and riche, and yong, and wel bigon; And trewely, as myne housbondes tolde me, I hadde the beste quoniam myghte be. [WBP, 603-08] I ne loved nevere by no discrecioun, But evere folwede myn appetit, Al were he long, or short, or blak, or whit. [WBP, 622-24]

All of these passages exhibit a fusion of Lechery and Gluttony, succinctly demonstrating that sexual activity is a matter of appetite.

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The “feyned appetit” seems used as a metaphor for frigidity, but in the other instances we are dealing with a sexualized gluttony. Thus the passage about the “likerous mouth” and “likerous tayl” is simply greedy eating translated into sexual greediness. Having a “coltes tooth” indicates youthful wantonness, but also implies a liking for fresh and palatable things, which means that we are dealing with a sexual version of epicurism. “Gat-tothed” probably comes from gaptoothed or gate-toothed, and is evidently used by the Wife to indicate her sexual voraciousness, a reading which is supported by the physiognomists, who, as Curry notes, read the word as a sign of gluttony and lasciviousness.63 My own feeling is that the term refers to the interstice between the upper front teeth of goat or hare, both animals associated with Venus and lust. Finally, the lack of moderation displayed in the final passage indicates that the sin at hand is the outcome of the sin of immoderation as applied to sexual activity. The Remedium contra peccatum Gule [831-35] is quite appropriate to the Wife of Bath, for this turns out to be abstinence, provided that it is complemented “by pacience and by charitee”. To which the Parson adds “that men doon it for Godes sake”, thus endearingly suggesting that he is none to sure about the exact meaning of the concept of charity. In its train we find “attemperaunce, that holdeth the meene in alle thynges; eek shame [modesty], that eschueth alle deshonestee; suffisance, that seeketh no riche metes ne drynkes” and, finally, mesure, sobrenesse and sparynge [833]. These are no Wifely virtues, any of them, and this is precisely why they read as a mirror upheld to her gluttonous behaviour. Lechery As announced before, Lechery or Lust is not well represented in the Parson’s account. In its meagreness, Chaucer once again follows Gower who curiously comes up with just a single tale – the notorious one of Apollonius of Tyre and its side-issue of incest. Chaucer does better than this but his treatment is highly selective and turns a blind eye to a wide variety of sexual sinning. His chief interest is in everyday sexuality, the Parson leading us along the Augustinian path which ranges from the early stage of its contemplation to the deed itself. 63

Curry: 92ff.

278 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath Avowtrie (Adultery) [840].

The Wife of Bath is a self-confessed and competent adulterer. Her admission on the previous page of indiscriminate lovemaking is an excellent instance. So is her chiding, as a cover-up for her misbehaviour, in familiar passages such as this [WBP, 386-88]: For as an hors I koude byte and whyne. I koude pleyne, and yit was in the gilt, Or elles often tyme hadde I been spilt. Her “walkynge out by nyghte” is a most telling point, too. What would any husband think if his wife were given to slipping out of the house at night for obscure trysts and gave him hell for berating her for this? Add to this the biblical implication of this nightwalking, which identifies such a woman as a godless whore, and the scarlet outfit she wears – and the picture ought to be clear.64

The Five Fingers of Lechery: a. ogling or flirting, “the fool lokynge of the fool womman”, springs from “coveitise of the herte” [853].

We catch the Wife in the act during her fourth husband’s funeral [WBP, 596-99]:65 As help me god! Whan that I saugh hym go After the beere, me thoughte he hadde a paire Of legges and of feet so clene and faire That al myn herte I yaf unto his hoold. The lecherous eye is also present earlier: And yet of oure apprentice Janekyn, For his cripse heer, shynynge as gold so fyn, And for he squiereth me bothe up and doun,

64

Cf Chapter Seven, The Wife of Bath’s Sermon. Support here is found with Beryl Rowland, ‘Chaucer’s Dame Alys: Critics in Blunderland?’, NM 73 (1972): 381-95, esp 393; ‘On the Timely Death of the Wife of Bath’s Fourth Husband’, Archiv 209 (1973): 273-82, esp 278. 65 There is an element of adultery involved here as well. The Parson is quite sure that “o womman [sholde have] but o man” [921] and that all further sexually tinted contacts are adulterous. In actual practice, too, there must have been something like a prescribed period of time – forty days or so, one imagines – before becoming an officially, legally and socially certified widow. And, at any rate, the Wife’s words indict her on the count of spiritual adultery. Her husband is barely cold and being carried to his grave when she is already lecherously eyeing the attractive Jankyn.

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 279 Yet hastow caught a fals suspecioun. I wol hym noght, thogh thou were deed tomorwe! [WBP, 303-07] b.“vileyns touchynge in wik- We may take this to be included in the “daliance” kede manere” seems to re- which moved the Wife of Bath tell Jankyn that she fer to petting or foreplay wanted him for her next husband. [853]. c. “foule wordes” [854] It is present in all places where the Wife of Bath holds out her maistrie with its sexual promises, even though she is still a married woman. Needless to say, all that she told Jankyn during their fateful “daliance” also constitutes a case of “foule wordes”. Worth remembering here is that this took place during Lent, a time when all sexual contact was proscribed. Her frequent use of four-letter words also qualifies. d. kissing [856-57] is here a This evidently refers to sexual practices by impotent yet euphemism for cunnilingus, lecherous old husbands. There is, of course, no word on “kissen in vileynye, for that such an unmentionable subject in the Wife’s confession mouth is the mouth of helle; yet the recurrent epithet of “olde dotard” and similar phrases is a suggestive datum, particularly when we and namely thise olde dotards holours, yet wole they find her to promise to one of them that she will keep her bele chose for his “owene tooth” [WBP, 447-48]. kisse, though they may nat do, and smatre hem” [857]. e. the “stynkynge dede of The Wife’s admission that she could not “withdrawe Lecherie” [her] chambre of Venus from a good felawe” is sufficient admission. Fornication [865] is the Parson’s word for sexual intercourse between unmarried people.

The Wife’s above admission of having loved widely and indiscriminately, “al were he long, or short, or blak, or whit”, seems a good indication, recalling the dark implication of Chaucer’s remark in the General Prologue about her “oother compaignye in youthe”.

Prostitution is a man’s sin: forcing “wommen to yelden hem a certeyn rente of hire bodily puterie”, which sometimes involves “his owene wyf or his child” [885].

Being a woman, the Wife of Bath cannot possibly be guilty of anything like this. All the same, we should note that Chaucer has taken care to reveal her as someone willing to prostitute herself for money or similar things. We know the text [WBP, 416-17]:

Pollution stands for nocturnal emission. This is largely caused by a faulty distribution of the humours, with one exception, namely

The Wife of Bath comes up with a dream episode which is rather suggestive [WBP, 577-82]:

For wynnyng wolde I al his lust endure, And make me a feyned appetit.

I seyde I mette [dreamt] of hym al nyght, He wolde han slayn me as I lay upright,1

280 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath “vileyns thoghtes that been enclosed in mannes mynde whan he gooth to slepe” [914].

And al my bed was ful of verray blood; But yet I hope that he shal do me good, For blood bitokeneth gold, as me was taught. And al was fals; I dremed of it right naught.66

To end with, in the light of the Church’s condemnatory stand on sexual matters it is surprising to find that this subject is so summarily dealt with. There are wide gaps in the Parson’s picture, ranging from the absence of such practices as masturbation to those of rape (which does happen to be mentioned in the Sequitur secunda pars Penitencie, just as love-making within the church) and other manifestations of human sexuality. Apart from noting Gower’s even briefer treatment of the theme, which is suggestive but does not really explain matters, I am somewhat at a loss to account for this. The closest that I can come to an explanation is that the meagreness of the classification constitutes a precautionary measure. A wise pastor is out to move his flock to penitence, not to alert them to the possibility of interesting aberrant sexual practices. He lets sleeping dogs lie. This view is supported by what we find when the Parson discusses homosexuality. This is done so obliquely that without recourse to the underlying Bible text it is not even clear what exactly he is talking about: “thilke abhomynable synne, of which that no man unnethe oghte speke ne write” – so terrible indeed that the Parson feels compelled to excuse its mention in the Good Book by explaining that God’s words cannot be tainted [910]. It is in the remedial words that the link with the Wife of Bath is once again distinguished most clearly. The passage is entirely revealing, as its words seem to be directed at the Wife of Bath in an almost personal fashion, thus indicating that we may have a major source here for Chaucer’s portrait of the Wife. The remedy for Lechery is “generally chastitee and continence”, with special praise for “chastitee in mariage, and chastitee of widwehod” [915-16]. In this context mar66 No Freud is required to interpret the sexual symbolism here. The dream is essentially a defloration dream, the slaying being all sexual and the gold referring to the joy that is expected to spring from the act itself, much like the note of “blisse” upon which her Tale ends. What is also implied is that the Wife did dream of Jankyn alright, but not in the terms that she admits to. This is borne out by the scansion of the line: And ál was fáls, I drémed of ít right noúght. The meter stresses normally weak it, suggesting that there were quite different dreams, which brings me to my point, namely that the passage is very suggestive of pollution. The facile argument here is the Wife’s spiritual pollution of Jankyn, but this is not what Chaucer is driving at here. He is saying that she has had a naughty dream, pollution of another sort.

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riage is a very special thing, as it is a sacrament “figured bitwixe Crist and holy chirche” [922]. In reflection of this, it is also ordained that “o man sholde have but o womman, and o womman but o man” [921] and that the “man is heved of a womman”[922]. Consequently, it is a wife’s duty to “be subget to hire housbonde” in obedience as well as serving “hym in alle honestee, and [being] attempree of hire array” [930, 932] – precisely the sort of “maistrie” which the Wife is up in arms against. Contravention of this last aspect draws the full measure of the Parson’s spleen. “Wyves that been apparailled in silk and in precious purpre ne mowe nat clothen hem in Jhesu Crist,” “No wight seketh precious array but only for veyne glorie, to been honoured the moore biforn the peple” and “It is a greet folye, a womman to have a fair array outward and in hirself be foul inward” [933-35]. The Wife of Bath link seems further indicated here by the shades of her Loathly Lady’s riddle here, the choice between fair and foul. Yet other aspects are involved as well. A wife should also be “mesurable in lookynge and in berynge and in lawghynge, and discreet in alle hire wordes and hire dedes. And aboven alle worldly thyng she sholde loven hire housbonde with al hire herte, and to hym be trewe of hir body” [936-37]. The entire passage but particulary the italicized part indicate not only a link with her part in the General Prologue and her confession but a further link with the hag’s riddle, as the Parson’s subsequent words make clear that a “parfit mariage” requires that both a wife’s heart and “al the body [are] the housbondes” [938], surely the exact reversal of the terms on which the Wife’s “parfit joye” may be enjoyed at the end of her tale. Similarly, his discussion of the terms under which husband and wife may have intercourse calls to mind the Wife’s marriage advertisement. Sex in marriage is meritorious when it is engaged in to get children and venial when it involves the “marriage debt” – which stands for sexual activity on a regular basis as part of the marriage contract – and is fully forgivable when it is done on the wife’s part in order to “eschewe leccherye and vileynye”, a curious definition which suggests the submission of unwilling wives for the sake of keeping their husbands within bounds. This is no wild interpretation. The Parson remarks, with reference to the marriage debt but no doubt also to the rest, that a woman who “yeldeth to hire housbonde the dette of hir body [...] agayn hir likynge and the lust of hire herte” must be accounted as chaste and thus guiltless of sin. Sexual activity becomes

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truly deadly sin when people “assemble oonly for amorous love and for noon of the foreseyde causes, but for to accomplice thilke brennynge delit, they rekke nevere how ofte. Soothly it is deedly synne; and yet, with sorwe, some folk wol peynen hem moore to doon than hire appetit suffiseth” [943]. Again we have a passage that we hear echoed in the Wife of Bath’s theme of maistrie and the ending of her Tale. Also, note how appetit crops up here with its sexual connotation in exactly the sort of context that we have become familiar with. The Parson largely rounds off his present outline with some words on chastity, which turns out to be something for the ladies only. There are three states of increasing perfection to be distinguished. First, abstinence in marriage. It would be very meritorious on a wife’s part “if that [she] koude kepen hire al chaast by licence of hir housbonde, so that she yeve nevere noon occasion that he agilte” [946]. One understands where all the blame lies for male lechery. The second way of chastity is to be “a clene wydewe, and eschue the embracynges of man, and desiren the embracynge of Jhesu Crist”, a path that lies open to those who have lost their husbands and “wommen that han doon leccherie and been releeved by penitence” [945]. All such women should be “clene in herte as wel as in body and in thought, and mesurable in clothynge and in contenaunce; and been abstinent in etynge and drynkynge, in spekynge, and in dede” [947]. Finally, there is the woman who remains a virgin, “hooly in herte and clene of body”. Such a person is “spouse to Jhesu Crist and she is the lyf [prob. darling] of angeles” [948], for “virginitee baar oure Lord Jhesu Crist, and virgine was hymselve” [950]. It is easy to see how the Parson’s words apply to the Wife. She is all that is not “clene” in women. The Parson’s final words are on the avoidance of temptation in the form of leisure, eating and drinking, and sleeping too long – properly the remedy for sloth and gluttony, one should think, but at the same time a restating of the closeness of all sin – and the advice for “a man or a womman [to] eschue the compaignye of hem by whiche he douteth to be tempted” [951-54]. There is altogether too much “compaignye” in Chaucer’s portrait of the Wife for the present link to be accidental. It is there in the General Prologue as an express datum, the “oother compaignye in youthe”, is pervasively present in her confession in the shape of her wandering ways, particularly in the passages dealing with the wooing of Jankyn, and surely applies to all her socially approved roving to and from places of pilgrimage, including

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the Canterbury journey itself and all its wonderful opportunities for further temptation. A Matter of Falsifiability A fourth test is provided by an inspection of all the Wife’s personal pronouncements that directly or in paraphrase indicate the presence of deadly sin. The Wife of Bath’s Prologue abounds with these. Such a review serves as an excellent control, as it reverses the method used earlier to identify the Wife’s sins. A major selection criterion here has been the presence of such personal pronouns as I, me and my, as prime indicators of the confessional voice, even if everything comes down to self-will actively opposing God’s commands:   



   

      

I laughe whan I thynke/How pitously a-nyght I made hem swynke [WBP, 20102] = Envy (joye at oother mannes harm) and Pride (swellynge of herte); Me neded nat do lenger diligence/To wynne hir love, or doon hem reverence [WBP, 205-06], I ne tolde no deyntee of hir love [WBP, 208] = Sloth (necligence) and Pride (irreverence); I told of it no stoor./They had me yeven hir lond and hir tresoor [WBP, 203-04], sith they hadde me yeven al hir lond,/What sholde I taken keep for hem to plese [WBP, 212-13] = Sloth (necligence), Pride (irreverence) and Avarice (greed); I sette hem so a-werke, by my fey/That many a nyght they songen ‘weilaway!’ [WBP, 215-16], I governed hem so wel, by my lawe,/That ech of hem ful blisful was and fawe/ to bring me gaye thynges [WBP, 219-21], They were ful glad whan I spak to hem faire [WBP, 222] = Avarice (thraldom); I chidde hem spitously [WBP, 223], ther wolde I chide [WBP, 408], evere I wolde hem chide [WBP, 419] = Anger (chiding); I wol hym noght, thogh thou were deed tomorwe! [WBP, 307] = Anger (lying) and Lechery (adultery); Yet koude I make his berd [WBP, 361] = Pride (boasting); {Thus] baar I stifly myne old housbondes on honde […] and al was fals, but that I took witnesse/On Janekyn, and on my nece also.[WBP, 379-81], wolde I beren hem on honde [WBP, 393] = Envy (gruchchyng and murmuracion, false accusation), Avarice (false witness) and Anger (chiding and lying); I swoor [WBP, 396] = Avarice (perjury, lying) and Anger (lying); I koude byte and whyne [WBP, 386], I koude pleyne [WBP, 387], I pleyned first [WBT, 390] = Envy (gruchchyng and murmuracion, discord); Yet tickled I his herte [WBP, 395] = Anger (flattery); I avaunte me [WBP, 403] = Pride (avauntynge); I hadde the bettre […]/By sleighte, or force [WBP, 405] = Avarice (theft); [I hadde the bettre] by continueel murmur or grucchyng [WBP, 406] = Envy (gruchchyng or murmuracion); [Not] til he had maad his raunson unto me,/Thanne wolde I suffre hym do his

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nycetee [WBP, 411-12], For wynnyng wolde I al his lust endure,/And maken me a feyned appetit [WBP,416-17]= Sloth (cooldnesse), Avarice (greed) and Lechery (self-prostitution); Is it for ye wolde have my queynte allone? [WBP, 444]= Lechery (foule wordes); And I was yong and ful of ragerye,/Stibourn and strong [WBP, 455-56] = Lechery, Pride (inpatience and inobedience); How koude I dance to an harpe smale,/ And synge [WBP, 457-58] = Pride (avauntynge); Whan I had dronke a draughte of seete wyn [WBP, 459] = Gluttony; And after wyn on Venus moste I thynke [WBP, 464] = Gluttony and Lechery; Unto this day it dooth myn herte boote/That I have had my world as in my tyme [WBP, 472-73] = Pride (avauntynge and inpudence); I hadde in herte greet despit [WBP, 481] = Anger (despit, technically Pride but here used as a species of Anger); I made hym of the same wode a croce [WBP, 484], in his owene grece I made hym frye [WBP, 487], in erthe I was his purgatorie [WBP, 489], how soore I hym twiste [WBP, 494] = Anger (premeditated vengeance), Envy (joye of oother mannes harm and bitternesse of herte); To hire biwreyed I my conseil al [WBP, 533], I wolde han toold his conseil every deel,/and so I dide ful often [WBP, 538-39] = Anger (defamation); I hadde the bettre leyser […] for to be seye [WBP, 551-52] = Pride (vainglory) and Sloth (ydelnesse); We hadde swich daliance [WBP, 565] = Lechery (adultery); I spak to hym and seyde hym how that he,/If I were wydwe, sholde wedde me [WBP, 567-68] = Lechery (foule wordes) and Avarice (“flesshly” simony); Yet was I nevere without purveiance/Of mariage, n’of othere thynges eek. [WBP, 570- 71] = Lechery (adultery); I baar him on honde he hadde enchanted me,/… And al was fals [WBP, 575, 582] = Anger (flattery) and Avarice (false witness); I weep algate, and made sory cheere [WBP, 588] = Pride (hypocrisy); But for that I was purveyed of a make,/I wepte but smal [WBP, 592] = Pride (hypocrisy) and Lechery (adultery); Yet I always hadde a coltes tooth [WBP, 602] = Gluttony, but applied to Lechery (epicurism); I hadde the beste quoniam myghte be [WBP, 608] = Lechery (foule wordes); Venus me yaf my lust, my likerousnesse [WBP, 611] = Lechery; I folwed ay my inclinacioun [WBP, 615] = Pride (inpatience) and Lechery; I koude noght withdrawe/ My chambre of Venus from a good felawe [WBP, 61718], I ne loved nevere by no discrecioun [WBP, 622] = Gluttony, but applied to Lechery (immoderation) and Lechery (fornication); I took no keep, so that he liked me [WBP, 625] = Sloth (rechelessnesse) and Lechery; Stibourn I was [WBP, 637] = Pride (inpatience); [I was] of my tonge a verray jangleresse [WBP, 638] = Pride, Anger (jangling); and walke I wolde, […] although he had it sworn [WBP, 639-40] = Sloth (ydelnesse) and Pride (despit, inpatience, presumpcioun and surquidrie);

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Ne I wolde nat of hym corrected be [WBP, 661], I hate hym that my vices telleth me [WBP, 662], I nolde noght forbere hym in no cas [WBP, 665] = Sloth (necligence) and Pride (inpatience, strif and inobedience); Thre leves have I plyght/Out of his book [WBP, 790-91] = Envy (malignitee) and Avarice (waste of goods); I with my fest […] took hym on the cheke [WBP, 792] = Anger (werre) and Envy (discord and malignitee).

About half of these sixty-odd instances are directly identifiable by name or synonym, the rest are readily recognized paraphrases. Including the overlapping, they show up the Wife as being governed by Pride (17 times), Envy (12), Anger (17), Sloth (10), Avarice (11), Gluttony (5) and Lechery (15). Besides the overlapping there is much repetition of sin and not all of the comites are encountered here. Yet the Wife’s sins range across all the Deadly Sins and accordingly span the gaps that are left open by Primo. They do, plainly and incontrovertibly, indict her of being a habitual sinner in every field of sin. Likewise, they indicate that a summa on Deadly Sin lies at the basis of her confession. Admittedly, this does not per se prove any direct debt to the Parson’s Tale but in the light of all our other findings it would be rather perverse to deny this. The Evidence of Lenvoy de Chaucer Final support of reading the Wife of Bath as subject to all the vices is provided by Chaucer himself, at the conclusion of the Clerk’s Tale, complete with the understandable fusion of gluttony and lechery that we have already come across and shall come across elsewhere. We find this in Lenvoy de Chaucer at the end of the Clerk’s Tale, explicitly directed at the Wife of Bath and very appropriately so, as it requires little discrimination to recognize that the entire tale is levelled at her. Though known universally as Patient Griselda (Grisild, Griseld, Griselde, Grisildis), the heroine actually incorporates all the virtues, which is not surprising since her tale is a thinly-veiled allegory in which she stands for Holy Church (with evident overtones of Mary), Walter for God, and the girl and boy for Mankind. It is beyond the scope of this study to trace the various links between the Wife’s Tale and the Clerk’s, belonging as they do to the Marriage Debate rather than our present discussion.67 Suffice it to say 67

A similar, though more limited reading is found with Rothman, who takes the

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that the Clerk’s Tale contains a wealth of implicit reference to the Wife of Bath which find their culmination in the “song to glade yow” at the conclusion of his Tale, which applies its lesson – virtuousness in everything – in ironical terms to contemporary women as exemplified by the Wife, the song expressly being “for the Wyves love of Bathe.” Its title Lenvoy de Chaucer, even if this is probably a scribal addition, leaves little doubt as to whose voice it is that is speaking. This point has naturally excited a wide range of debate but is one trap that we shall steer clear of. With or without the title, with Chaucer speaking or just the Clerk, neither its contents nor its author are anywhere in doubt. The Envoy as such consists of six stanzas, sardonically exhorting the Wife “and al hire secte” to continue in their ways and forego virtue. The voice is very much that of Chaucer and so is the way that its subject matter is dealt with. Each of the stanzas concerns a particular Deadly Sin or its virtuous counterpart, an identification for which I claim full honours, though the way has been paved here by Howell Chickering. He rightly points out68 that “there is a more obvious sort of joke in Chaucer’s selection of his twelve ‘-ence’ words: eight of them name what would be medieval wifely vir-tues in one context or another: patience, prudence, diligence, silence, innocence, reverence, eloquence, dispense”. Thus the first stanza refers to the impossibility of finding wives capable of Griselda’s patience. Patience is the remedium for Anger. The second advises wives not to let “noon humylitee youre tonge naille”. The lingual reference is to Janglynge, a comes of Pride, which is appropriate since Humility is the remedial virtue for Pride. The third stanza seemingly repeats the message of the previous two – the overlappingness of sin – but the remark about continuing to answer “at the countretaille” identifies the sin involved as Backbiting, hence Envy, with Charity as its remedy. The fourth calls for fortitude in opposing men and all their doings, Fortitude being the remedy for Sloth. The fifth verse exhorts the “archewyves” to show their husbands no Envoy to be an ironic contradiction of the virtues of humility and obedience as depicted in the Clerk’s Tale. Thus, by implication, it becomes a reaffirmation of these virtues, aimed at refuting the Wife of Bath. (Irving N. Rothman, ‘Humility and Obedience in the Clerk’s Tale, with the Envoy Considered as an Ironic Affirmation’, PLL 9 [1973]: 115-27). 68 Howell Chickering, ‘Form and Interpretation in the Envoy to the Clerk’s Tale’, ChauR 29 (1995): 352-72.

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mercy, meaning that they should not go in for “misericorde and pitee [as] releevynge of Avarice”. The final lines are on restraint and chastity, the remedy for Lechery, with a barb directed at the Wife of Bath’s Tale’s fair and foul dilemma: If thou be fair, [...] Shewe thou thy visage and thyn apparaille; If thou be foul, be fre of thy dispence. [Clerk’s Tale, 1207-09]

The one sin that is lacking is Gluttony, but this is not at all surprising in the light of its token presence in the Parson’s Tale and Wife of Bath’s Prologue (and the Pardoner’s Prologue, for that matter) and confirms my argument that Chaucer saw fit to fuse Gluttony and Lechery, casting the Wife as a glutton for a life of sensuality or, if one wishes, a voracious voluptuary. Needless to say, this is also why there are only six stanzas instead of seven. Throughout the stanzas are scattered references to various aspects of the Deadly Sins as well, such as chiding, contrariousness, bossiness, forwardness. A most notable one is the adhortation “Ay clappeth as a mille, I yow consaille”, which is straight from the Parson’s Tale: “Janglynge is whan a man speketh to muche biforn folk and clappeth as a mille” [ParsT, 406]. The Envoy’s concluding line is remarkable, too. “And lat hym care, and wepe, and wrynge, and waille!” What has gone unnoticed by the critics is that this remark is not just descriptive of the husband’s suffering at the hands of “archewyves” or a clever transitional ploy to link up the Clerk and the Merchant. It also refers straight to the Parson’s discussion of lechery [863], which is very appropriate to the Merchant whose reference to “wepyng and waylyng” produces a direct echo: Certes, the fyve fyngres of Glotonie the feend put in the wombe of a man, and with his fyve fingres of Lecherie he gripeth hym by the reynes, for to throwen hym into the fourneys of helle,/ther as they shul han the fyr and the wormes that evere shul lasten, and wepynge and wailynge, sharp hunger and thurst, [and] grymnesse of develes, that shullen al totrede [trample] hem withouten respit and withouten ende.

Note how here, too, Gluttony and Lechery are mentioned in one breath. There is a further echo involved from the Parson’s sermon on

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penitence, where he discusses the fate of the damned and advises repentence in the here and now: Forasmuche as a man may acquiten hymself biforn God by penitence in this world, and nat by tresor, therfore sholde he preye to God to yeve hym respit to biwepe and biwaillen his trespas./For certes, al the sorwe that a man myghte maken fro the bigynnyng of the world nys byt a litel thyng at regard of the sorwe of helle. [178-80].

This sort of lamenting, the Parson explains, ought to signify penitence, as expressed by “the waymentynge of man that sorweth for his synne and pyneth hymself for he hath mysdoon” [85]. Where such penitence is absent, as in the lines that we are discussing, the consequence is hell and damnation.69 As a final link with both the Wife of Bath and the Parson there are the Envoy’s words on being fair or foul: If thou be fair, ther folk been in presence, Shewe thou thy visage and thyn apparaille; If thou be foul, be free of thy dispense; To gete thee freendes ay do thy travaille. [ClT, 1207-10]

Of course, this slyly repeats the complaints of the old husbands, who wisely shy away from identifying which of the two she represents And if that she be fair, thou verray knave, Thou seyst that every holour wol hire have […] And if that she be foul, thou seist that she Coveiteth every man that she may see. [WBP, 253-54, 265-66]

The matter of being fair or foul naturally and very intentionally so crops up again at the conclusion of the Wife of Bath’s Tale when the crone poses the ultimate question to her young and beddable husband. She, however, slyly reverses the unfavourable text: Chese now […]/ To han me foul and old til that I deye, And to be to yow a trewe, humble wyf, And nevere yow displese in al my lyf; Or elles ye wol han me yong and fair, And take youre aventure of the repair 69

Parson’s Tale, 180ff.

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 289 That shal be to youre hous be cause of me, Or in som oother place, may wel be. [WBT, 1219-26]

What appears to have gone generally unnoticed is the extreme measure in which the Parson’s Tale discusses the issue of fair and foul under the heading of thraldom, which stands for being a slave to one’s sins. It is first found in the Parson’s discussion of contrition: And God seith in the Apocalipse, “Remembreth yow fro whennes that ye been falle”; for biforn that tyme that ye synned, ye were the children of God, and lymes of the regne of God;/but for youre synne ye been woxen thral, and foul, and membres of the feend…./And yet be ye fouler for youre longe continuyng in synne and youre synful usage, for which ye be roten in your synne, as a beest in his dong. [136-39]

This is followed up by half a page discussing the twin concepts of thraldom and foulness which ends upon the familiar proverb about the fair woman and the ring of gold in a sow’s nose, that is foreshadowed here in verset 139 [142-57]. The Parson returns to it once again in his Remedium contra peccatum Luxuriae when he states that “it is a greet folye, a womman to have a fair array outward and in hirself be foul inward” [935]. Its applicability to the Wife and the way her alter ego, the Loathly Lady, twists this around is self-evident and entirely to the point. We shall extensively inspect this in Chapter Seven, where the import of the Wife’s preaching is discussed. Meanwhile, we may note that all this makes the message of Lenvoy de Chaucer a marked bit of support. It restates briefly the range of the Wife of Bath’s sinfulness and not only this – it reaffirms the Parson’s role and even seems to carry the author’s own signature in confirmation of our findings. The Wife of Bath’s Spiritual and Physical Sterility There remains one final aspect of the Wife of Bath’s sinfulness to be addressed. Her shadow persona, the Pardoner, is drawn not only as a eunuchus ex nativitate, but as a eunuchus non Dei as well, a spiritually sterile character who is incapable of performing good works. Now let us feminize these terms and apply them to the Wife of Bath. She is a most demonstrable counterpart, a woman sterile in the performance of anything remotely suggesting virtuousness. If the Pardoner analogy fits, and it is difficult to see why this should not be so, this

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implies a physical dimension to complement her spiritual barrenness. The absence of any children mentioned in the course of five marriages, though admittedly negative evidence, is suggestive. With all her marriages and love affairs, how could she possibly have escaped motherhood, both as a matter of everyday reality in a noncontraceptive age and as the outcome of the divinely ordained duty of begetting children that is a major foundation of the sacrament of marriage? We are reminded of this when the Wife says that I wol bistowe the flour of al myn age In the actes and in fruyt of mariage [WBP, 113-15]

and then fails entirely to follow up her suggestion and leaves the “fruyt”, which conjures up visions of children, entirely undiscussed.70 It is remarks like these which have led several scholars to comment on the Wife’s apparent childlessness. Barrenness also links up easily with the Wife’s love of travelling. Her extensive journeying to places of pilgrimage, particularly Jerusalem – a lengthy and arduous undertaking – does not seem to indicate a woman encumbered by the bearing and rearing of children. What is more, it could indicate something beyond mere pleasure seeking, namely an attempt at great personal expense (and not without risk or a substantial investment of time and money, if we are to believe contemporary accounts) to find a miracle cure in the holiest places of Christendom. Such travel was entirely common in Chaucer’s day. Her visiting Jerusalem thrice, with its overtone of divine completeness, is another indication of the urgency of her pilgrimages.71

70 It has been suggested that the Wife’s notion of fruit is the acquisition of wealth: “God’s command to ‘wexe and multiplye’ bears not fruit in children but in profit”. Sheila Delany, ‘Sexual Economics, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and The Book of Margery Kempe’ in Writing Woman: Women Writers and Women in Literature Medieval to Modern (New York: Schocken, 1983): 76-92. On the Wife’s childlessness, cf Benson, p 865 note 28. Also, Judith Slover, ‘A Good Wive Was There of Biside Bathe’ in Lambdin & Lambdin : 243-55, at 247. 71 Such travel for miracle cures is well-attested. J.J. Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages (XIVth Century), London, 1899, p 339ff. Also, Wayne Shumaker, ‘Alisoun in Wander-Land: A Study in Chaucer’s Mind and Literary Method’, ELH 18 (1951): 77-106. Also, see Bowden, p 221ff; D.J. Hall, English Mediaeval Pilgrimage (London: Routledge, 1965), p 149ff.

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Then, too, there is the consideration that on one of these occasions she was willing to risk her shaky fourth marriage in order to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and even leave behind, for something close to a full year, the alluring attractions of young Jankyn.72 In this light, her account of her fourth husband’s funeral is also worth noting. On this most natural of all occasions for a family reunion, what with the Wife’s homecoming and her husband’s death, there is no mention of any children at all – just Jankyn and the neighbours: He deyde whan I cam fro Jerusalem, [...] To chirche was myn housbonde born a-morwe With neighebores, that for hem maden sorwe; And Jankyn, oure clerk, was oon of tho. [WBP, 495, 593-95]

Perhaps even more curious is the fact that in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, among the many answers which the knight finds to the riddle of what women desire most, none is that of being a mother and having children – which, if not intentional, is a puzzling oversight indeed, since this is what Chaucer’s age held women to have been created for. Among the scriptural passages quoted against her by her husbands, one stands out in this connection: Thou liknest eek wommenes love to helle, To bareyne lond, ther water may nat dwelle. Thou liknest it also to wilde fyr; The moore it brenneth, the moore it hath desir To consume every thyng that brent wole be. [WBP, 371-75]

This is from St Jerome who says that there are four things that cannot say “enough”: “infernus, et amor mulieris, et terra quae non satiatur aqua, et ignis non dicit satis est”.73 Chaucer’s use here of the word “barren” is worth noting, though it is of course this aspect that all four share. It is his own addition, for St Jerome sticks to “amor mulieris” here.74 Interestingly, the King James translation again comes 72

The association of pilgrimage, miracles and marriage is expressly found in: Therfore I made my visitaciouns [...] to thise pilgrimages, To pleyes of myracles, and to mariages. [WBP, 555-58] 73 St Jerome, p 250. Cf Benson, p 868 note 371. The translation reads: Hell, like a woman’s love, or earth that is unsated by water, or fire, cannot say “enough”. 74 The Vulgate reads “os vulvae” [the womb’s mouth] here instead of “amor mulieris”

292 | Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath

close to Chaucer and reads “the barren womb”. Although the gist of this passage is that a woman’s love is destructive, the present passage also seems to hint at the Wife’s inability to produce any children. In part, the Wife’s childlessness may also be attributable to the castrating performance to which she owns up in her description of her early marriages. As we have seen, her use of epithets such as “olde dotard” and the like links up with the Parson’s description of lecherous yet impotent old husbands. A penultimate indication may reside in the physiognomical detail provided by the adjective “gat-tothed”. Though this evidently applies to her sexual appetite, there is a chance that it also indicates barrenness. “Gat-tothed”, interpreted as irregularly placed teeth or the absence of one or more teeth, may be a reference to Canticles 4, whose second verse, in its description of the bride’s fruitfulness, says “Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which come up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them”. As if to underline this reading, the passage in which we find the word “gat-tothed” is where she reminisces on her lustiness and deals with the influence of Venus and Mars upon her condition. My inclination, mentioned above, is to interpret “gat-tothed” as an indication of a wide interstice between the two upper front teeth, reminiscent of Venus-associated animals such as the goat and the hare – both symbols of lust. It is easy to see that the passage involved [WBP, 603-26] ironically refers to the same chapter of Canticles, which warmly sings the praise of the bride’s beauty and fruitfulness. She is fair and rich, for she is an orchard bursting with fruits; she is young, her “breasts are like two young roes”; and she is “wel bigon”, her shapeliness being praised throughout the song. She is lusty, too, inviting her “beloved to come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits”. Her private parts are praised as a “garden inclosed”, a “spring shut up”, a “fountain sealed” in much the same way that the Wife’s “quoniam” is complimented, though her chastity is of course long gone. Even the Wife’s spots, her [a woman’s love]. The difference is obviously caused by the interpretation of the clause “quae non satiatur aqua” [that cannot be sated by water] as referring to both terra and a woman’s love. Cf also Benson, p 868 note 371. On Chaucer’s knowledge of the Vulgate, cf Grace W. Landrum, ‘Chaucer’s Use of the Vulgate’, PMLA 39 (1924): 75-100. Accepting that Chaucer knew his Bible, we must also accept that he knew it well enough (or thought he did) to quote from memory, as little memory lapses are the most plausible way to account for the several places where he diverges from his literal Bible text.

Confession, Sin and the Wife of Bath | 293

“prente of seinte Venus seel” and “Martes mark” in two private places have their ironical counterpart, for Canticles’ bride is “all fair, there is no spot in thee”. St Jerome, whose discussion of Canticles underlies this portrait, insists that “Canticum canticorum non significat amorem carnis” and links its bride with the Virgin (“similitudinem habet Matris Domini”) and conception (“Ecce virgo in utero concipiet, et pariet filium”) and further adds that this is the virgin of whom the Bible says elsewhere: “Laetare, sterilis, quae non paris, erumpe, et clama quae non parturi, quoniam multi filii desertae magis, quam ejus quae habet virum” (Isaiah 54:1).75 The funny quoniam echo in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue may not be intentional, but it does give one pause for thought. A final consideration is that barrenness provides a perfect key towards the unriddling of the Wife of Bath’s persistent fight against the Almighty, much in the same way that the Pardoner’s eunuchdom does with respect to his lifestyle. Here is a profound motive and one that, vide Chaucer’s treatment of the Pardoner, cannot simply be dismissed as modern psychobabble. Her badness is her answer to an uncaring Creator who has made her incapable of procreation. Thus, it is very likely that Chaucer, having cast the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner as sterile in good works, that is, spiritually sterile, also conceived of both of them as physically sterile. What is harder to determine, in the light of the state of flux that seems to have ruled the writing of the Canterbury Tales, is whether the Wife’s barrenness was at any time toned down or, conversely, meant to undergo greater emphasis. However unsatisfactory, this is the state in which we shall have to let go of the subject.

75

One of the points of similitude here is the concept of the “hortus conclusus”, which we have just encountered as the “garden enclosed”. In terms of medieval exegesis, this symbol of virginity stands for the Virgin in particular and, by analogy, for Holy Church and the untainted spirit. It plays an important part in the Merchant’s Tale. The rest is from St Jerome, pp 251-55. The quotations translate as: Canticles does not stand for carnal love. She resembles the Lord’s Mother. See, a Virgin conceives in her womb and brings forth a child. Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife.

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6. The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin An Angry Man’s Confession Like the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the Pardoner’s provides us with an exposé of his practices that in its way is as shameless as hers. But unlike her, he launches into his confession straightaway, as soon as the Introduction ends, and its 134 lines make for much less voluminous reading than the 636 that constitute her confession, even though they still are the second longest prologue in the Canterbury Tales. There is no mistaking that the Pardoner’s self-revelation here is in the nature of a confession in the theological sense, particularly as it is Deadly Sin that he confesses to with great emphasis. Of course, the Pardoner being less expansive upon the subject than the Wife of Bath, it is a foregone conclusion that the selection of sins confessed to is much narrower. Yet, as Whittock notes, it is “of the same order as that of the Wife of Bath”.1 As for defining the Pardoner’s confession as an angry man’s confession, this springs from the observation that for all his emphasis on cupiditas it is Anger that drives him. This is astutely pointed out by the Host, after their clash: “Now,” quod oure Hoost, “I wol no lenger pleye With thee, ne with noon oother angry man”. [ParsT, 958-59]

Some Chaucer scholars recognize this anger. Eric Stockton notes that “the Pardoner’s psychic unrest is so deep that he hates all men, including himself”.2 Garland Ethel puts it thus: not covetousness, but wrath against the Divine was the Pardoner’s prime motivation. He would be revenged upon God [out of ‘immortal hate in repayment for what the eunuchus ex nativitate would believe outrageous wrong visited by the hand of God’] and upon men whose

1 2

Whittock: 186. Stockton: 57.

296 | The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin normality he mortally envied. To achieve by guile what by force was impossible required the whole armor of sin.3

While this illustrates well the contrasting natures of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner, there is a fair number of shared characteristics as well. Both are driven by a private cupiditas – a covetousness of earthly things, a perverted love of the world’s delights and an unquenchable urge to prove themselves superior to God and his creation. The Pardoner’s Ipocrisis Religiosa There is good reason to regard our confessing Pardoner as a literary descendant of Gower’s Priest. This is particularly obvious in the correspondence between the figure of the hypocritical Pardoner, selling his religious services and wares “under hewe/Of hoolynesse” and the Priest, who deals with Gower’s confession both from a Christian point of view and that of the Courts of Love. Courtly love being to all intents and purposes a worldly parody of Christian love, he therefore stands implicitly indicted as a hypocritical preacher – wonderful fodder for a literary duel. The analogy is underscored by what Gower has Genius remark in Book I on the hypocrisy of the religious orders. As a skilled “quyter”, Chaucer would have loved the idea of rapping Gower’s knuckles, but did he actually apply it? It is obvious that Gower’s characterization of the religious hypocrite is largely conventional and consequently just one out of many sources from which Chaucer could have been working. Yet there is a chance that the answer is affirmative, for the obvious reason that in some places Chaucer’s portrayal of the Pardoner in the Prologue comes textually close to Genius’ sketch. To illustrate this, let me juxtapose Gower’s remarks about Ipocrisis Religiosa et Ecclesiastica (left)4 and the Pardoner’s hypocritical activities (right). When comparing them, we should keep in mind that Gower’s barbs are directed at the clergy at large, whereas the Pardoner represents a specific character engaged in self-confession. Mi sone, an ypocrite is this, A man which feigneth conscience, 3 4

What, trowe ye, that whiles I may preche, And wynne gold and silver for I teche,

Garland Ethel, ‘Chaucer’s Worste Shrewe’, MLQ 20 (1959): 211-227, at 227. Confessio Amantis, Book I, ll. 594-645 (Macaulay, vol II, pp 52-53).

The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin | 297 As thogh it were al innocence,

Withoute, and is noght withinne; And doth so for he wolde winne

Of his desir the vein astat. And whanne he comth anon therat, He scheweth thanne what he was, The corn is torned into gras, That was a Rose is thanne a thorn And he that was a Lomb beforn Is thanne a Wolf

That I wol lyve in poverte wilfully? Nay, nay, I thoghte it nevere, trewely! [PardP, 439-42] For myn entente is nat but for to wynne, And nothyng for correccioun of synne. [PardP, 403-04] I wol nat do no labour with myne handes, Ne make baskettes, and lyve therby, By cause I wol nat beggen ydelly. I wol noon of the apostles countrefete; I wol have moneie, wolle, chese, and whete, Al were it yeven of the povereste page Or of the povereste wydwe in a village, Al sholde hir children sterve for famyne. [PardP, 447-51]

Gower’s hypocrite is a pious dissembler, who is out for his own gain and then will show himself for the wolf he really is. The Pardoner is a similar customer, likewise in search of personal gain, unwilling to lead a humble apostolic life, and the very wolf that he should keep from the poorest widow’s door. Note the verbal echo in winne/wynne. and thus malice Under the colour of justice Is hid; and as the people telleth, Thise ordres witen where he [= Hypocrisy] duelleth, As he that of here conseil is, And thilke world which thei er this Forsoken, he drawth in ayein.

... whan I dar noon oother weyes debate Thanne wol I stynge hym with my tonge smerte In prechyng, so that he shal nat asterte To been defamed falsly, if that he Hath trespassed to my bretheren or to me. [PardP, 412-16]

The parallel is clear on two points. The Pardoner’s tricks of getting even with his perceived enemies are an obvious instance of “malice [hid] under the colour of justice”. Gower’s “thise ordres” coincides nicely with the Pardoner’s “my brethren [and] me”. He clotheth richesse, as men sein, Under the simplesce of poverte, And doth to seme of gret decerte Thing which is litel worth withinne: He seith in open, fy! to Sinne, And in secre ther is no vice Of which that he nis a Norrice:

Thus kan I preche agayn that same vice Which that I use, and that is avarice. But though myself be gilty in that synne, Yet kan I maken oother folk to twynne From avarice, and soore to repente. But that is nat my principal entente; I preche nothyng but for coveitise. [PardP, 427-33]

298 | The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin And evere his chiere is sobre and softe, And where he goth he blesseth ofte, Wherof the blinde world he dreccheth.

For certes, many a predicacioun Comth ofte tyme of yvel entencioun; Som for plesance of folk and flaterye To been avaunced by ypocrisie… [PardP, 407-10]

The correspondence is obvious. The hypocrite’s outward behaviour hides a nature that is totally given over to sin. Note how closely in meaning Gower’s description of the cleric who says fie to sin yet is a slave to it tallies with the Pardoner’s self-portrait as a preacher against the avarice by which he is consumed. Again, mark the textual echoes. Bot yet al only he ne streccheth His reule upon religioun Bot next to that condicioun In suche as clepe hem holy cherche It scheweth ek how he can werche Among tho wyde furred hodes, To geten hem the worldes goodes. And thei hemself ben thilke same That setten most the world in blame, Bot yet in contraire of her lore Ther is nothing thei loven more;

Than peyne I me to strecche forth the nekke, And est and west upon the people I bekke, As dooth a dowve sittynge on a berne. Myne handes and my tonge goon so yerne That it is joye to se my bisynesse. Of avarice and of swich cursednesse Is al my prechyng, for to make hem free To yeven hir pens, and namely unto me, For myn entente is nat but for to wynne, And nothyng for correccioun of synne. [PardT, 395-404]

Both hypocrites prey upon people in order “for to wynne”, contrary to their own teaching, which ought to be “for correccioun of synne.” Strecche/streccheth affords another interesting parallel. So that semende of liht thei werke The dedes whiche are inward derke. And thus this double Ypocrisie With his devolte apparantie A viser set upon his face, Wherof toward this worldes grace He semeth to be riht wel thewed, And yit his herte is al beschrewed.

For certes, many a predicacioun Comth ofte tyme of yvel entencioun. [PardT, 407-08] Thus spitte I out my venym under hewe Of hoolynesse, to semen hooly and trewe. But shortly myn entente I wol devyse: I preche of no thyng but for coveityse. [PardP, 421-24]

Gower and Chaucer make the same comment here: it is all substance and accident, outward appearance versus inner truth. Bot natheless he stant believed And hath his pourpos ofte achieved Of worschipe and of worldes welthe

But, herkneth, lordynges, in conclusioun: Youre likyng is that I shal telle a tale [...] By God, I hope I shal yow telle a thyng

The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin | 299 And takth it, as who seith, be stelthe Thurgh coverture of his fallas [deceit].

That shal by reson been at youre likyng. For though myself be a ful vicious man, A moral tale yet I yow tell kan, Which I am wont to preche for to wynne. [PardP, 454-61]

While there is nothing conclusive about this comparison and the objection holds good that Chaucer’s description of the Pardoner’s hypocrisy is conventional, the echoes (wynne/winne, synne/sinne, streccheth/strecche) are interesting. This is particularly true for streccheth/strecche. These two are used in different senses, which suggests a word memory that was stored within a general context but whose exact place and function had been lost. If so, this may indicate once again that at the time of his response to Gower’s challenge Chaucer had no direct access to a copy of the Confessio and was either working from notes or drawing from memory, one possibility being that he had never read it but heard it recited. The alternative is that Chaucer was consciously keeping away from incurring any literal debt to Gower, possibly as part of his intention to demonstrate the superiority of his Testament of Love. What is also worth noting are Gower’s last five lines. They are eminently applicable to the Pardoner’s sneaky ploys. At the end of his tale, for all his self-exposure, the Pardoner’s superior preaching has effected a situation whereby he stands believed. He is about to achieve his purpose of “worschipe and of worldes welthe”, by stealthy manoeuvring and veiling his deceitfulness (“coverture of his fallas”), when the Host brings his house of cards crashing down. Of course, there is no hard evidence here, yet it is a tempting thought that this passage may have provided the germinal idea for the outcome of the Pardoner’s preaching performance and the “discoverture of his fallas”. The Pardoner’s General Sinfulness Like the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner is portrayed as a seasoned sinner. Recognized by Kittredge as “perhaps the one lost soul of the Canterbury pilgrimage”, his self-confessed major mortal Sin is cupiditas – Avarice or Covetousness – the stock sin of bad quaestores.5 Yet when we read his confession what strikes us just as much or more are his Pride and his Anger. The essentials of what this chapter seeks to 5

Owst, Preaching, pp 85-87.

300 | The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin

demonstrate are to be found in Garland Ethel’s ‘Chaucer’s Worste Shrewe: the Pardoner’.6 His article convincingly argues the Pardoner’s culpability on all seven counts of Mortal Sin, though it does not go into any great detail and occasionally rests its case upon the overlapping nature of sin. There is a further perspective from which the Pardoner’s all-out sinfulness is underscored. It is a matter well understood by many that the Pardoner’s Tale has a special application to the Pardoner. Everything that he tells there has a special bearing on himself and, even though the Sins of the Tavern and cupiditas get most of the emphasis, there is no escaping the insight that all the other Deadly Sins are present, too. This aspect is discussed in Chapter Eight. The Pardoner’s Sins The Pardoner, as a self-confessed “ful vicious man”, is easily recognized as dominated by Pride, Anger and Avarice. Less distinct but present all the same are Sloth, as found in his refusal to engage in good works, Lechery in the “joly wenche in every town”, Gluttony in his drinking habits and Envy in his jealousy of other people’s money and possessions. For a closer look, we must turn to the Parson’s classification. The Pardoner’s confession being so much briefer than the Wife of Bath’s and the Parson’s division of sin having been extensively dealt with in her case, we can now move ahead without having to discuss the Parson’s position in detail. Pride The Pardoner’s subjection to Pride is manifest. What the Parson says on this point [392-406] is almost entirely applicable: Inobedient is he that disobeyeth for despit to the comandementz of God [...]/ Avauntour is he that bosteth of the harm [...] that he hath doon./ Ypocrite is he that hideth to shewe hym swich as he is, and sheweth hym swich as he noght is./Despitous is he that hath desdeyn of his neighebor that is to seyn - of his evene-Cristene, or hath despit to doon that hym 6

Ethel: 211-227. Ethel’s view is supported by a more recent study which seeks to relate the Pardoner to the figure of Vice familiar from medieval morality plays. Joyce E. Peterson,‘ “With Feigned Flattery”: The Pardoner as Vice’, ChauR 10 (1976): 32636.

The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin | 301 oghte do./Arrogant is he that thynketh that he hath thilke bountees in hym that hath noght, or weneth that he sholde have hem by his desertes, or elles he demeth that he be that he nys nat./Inpudent is he that for his pride hath no shame of his synnes./Swellynge of herte is whan a man rejoyseth hym of harm that he hath doon./Insolent is he that despiseth in his juggement alle othere folk, as to regard of his value, and of his konnyng, and of his spekyng, and of his beryng./Elacioun is whan he ne may neither suffre to have master ne felawe./Inpacient is he that wol nat been ytaught me undernome of his vice, and by strif werreieth trouthe wityngly, and deffendeth his folye./Contumax is he that thurgh his indignacioun is agayns everich auctoritee or power of hem that been his sovereyns./Presumpcioun is whan a man undertaketh an emprise that hym oghte nat do, or elles that he may nat do; and this is called surquidrie. Irreverence is whan men do nat honour there as hem oghte to doon, [...]/ Pertinacie is whan man deffendeth his folie, and trusteth to muchel to his owene wit./Veyneglorie is for to have pompe and delit in his temporeel hynesse, and glorifie hym in this worldly estaat./Janglynge is whan a man speketh to muche biforn folk, and clappeth as a mille, and taketh no keep of what he seith.

All this is readily found in the Pardoner’s confession, and on the whole too obviously so for me to go into all sorts of identification again. They are all there and it is not difficult to agree with Lowes, Makarewicz, Ethel and others that Pride indeed is the mother of all sins. All the same, on some a brief word of comment seems in order. The Pardoner’s hypocrisy has been amply dealt with in the past few pages. His Contumacy makes him a worthy partner of the Wife of Bath, as the sin involved, together with Elacioun, is really one of striving for personal maistrie in oppostion to God’s. His great fall, after his magisterial performance during his Tale, illuminates how his Insolence, Presumption and Pertinacy and snippets of other variations of Pride combine to cause this almost proverbial event. On the remedy for Pride, humility or meekness, we can be brief. There is no such thing in the Pardoner’s heart. Envy Various types of Envy crop up in the Pardoner’s confession. His Envy of Oother Mannes Goodnesse and of His Prosperitee is an inherent aspect of his money-grabbing ways. The purpose to which he sets his Tale also points this way. His Schadenfreude is omnipresent. His crowing over his trick of inducing unfaithful wives to contribute to the offering, an inverted type of Backbiting, is a good instance:

302 | The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin By this gaude [trick] have I wonne, yeer by yeer, An hundred mark sith I was pardoner. [PardP, 389-90]

His admission that ... many a predicacioun Comth ofte tyme of yvel entencioun; Som for plesance of folk and flaterye, To been avaunced by ypocrisye. [PardP, 407-10]

is an instance of Backbiting as praising “one’s neighebor by a wikked entente”. The neutral tone is amended two lines later by his admission that he is talking about his own practices. Disparagement of the good qualities of his fellow-Christians is clearest in the tricks of the trade that the Pardoner practises upon folk that “doon us displesances”: ... whan I dar noon oother weyes debate, Thanne wol I stynge hym with my tonge smerte In prechyng, so that he shal nat asterte To been defamed falsly, [...] For thogh I telle noght his propre name, Men shal wel knowe that it is the same. [PardP, 412-15, 417-18]

All that the Pardoner says and preaches essentially constitutes Gruchchyng or Murmuracion against God. The same thing holds good for his Rancour (Bitternesse of herte), which however we deduce not so much from his words as from the General Prologue’s comments upon his sexual condition. A good preacher’s words serve to promote concord among his audience. The Pardoner, on the other hand, is a sower of Discord, as testified by his Tale’s conclusion but also by moments like this when he comes uncomfortably close to the old serpent of Paradise and despoiler of the original state of concordia: Thus spitte I out my venym under hewe Of hoolynesse, to semen hooly and trewe. [PardP, 421-22]

Scorn of his fellow-men is pervasively present everywhere, as an essential aspect of his spiritual make-up. It is as characteristic as his self-admitted cupiditas.

The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin | 303

A final variation of envy is Malignitee, injuring someone in his person or his goods. This is implicit in the sin of disparagement, but surely includes the following: I wol have moneie, wolle, chese, and whete, Al were it yeven of the povereste page, Or of the povereste wydwe in a village, Al sholde hir children sterve for famyne. [PardP, 448-51]

To which we should add that the selling of fake relics and pardons involves the buyer in the sin of Simony and lulls him into a mistaken sense of spiritual security, which must surely be regarded as injurious not only to the culprit but to the victim as well. Love of One’s Fellow-Men is the remedy for Envy. The Pardoner loves no one save himself and perhaps not even that. Anger The first type of Anger, Premeditated Vengeance, is recognizable in the vengeful passage that describes how the Pardoner gets back at those whom he hates: By signes, and by othere circumstances [...] quyte I folk that doon us displesances. [PardP, 419-20]

Oold Wratthe gives us deeply rooted resentment. It is there at the bottom of what motivates him as an eunuchus ex nativitate, but not present formally in his confession. Discord and Werre are overlapping sins that we have already encountered. Manslaughter has three applicable types – Hate, Backbiting and Evil Counsel. The first two overlap largely with Oold Wratthe and Envy. Evil Counsel is clearly there in the Pardoner’s sales patter to his unwary audiences. The Parson’s admonition on this point is worth noting, since it fits the Pardoner so well: And men shul understonde that man shal nat taken his conseil of fals folk, ne of angry folk, or grevous folk, ne of folk that loven specially to muchel hir owene profit, ne to muche worldly folk, namely in conseilynge of soules. [ParsT, 641]

304 | The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin

Irreverence towards the sacrament of the altar (the eucharist) is likely to be present in the shape of the Pardoner taking confession [PardP, 377-88], when he is a scoffer and probably a renegade cleric to boot, neither authorized to hear confession nor pronounce the absolution that is needed before partaking in the sacrament.7 Quaintly, Swearing is hardly present in the Pardoner’s confession and there is a good chance that all but one of its instances represent malicious mimicking rather than an expression of a private vice. This may be something of a surprise, particularly when we recall how scholars such as Robert P. Miller and Frederick Tupper claim a great capacity for swearing on his part.8 In point of fact, he is found to swear only four times throughout the Canterbury Tales. This happens once when he interrupts the Wife of Bath and echoes her frequent use of God’s name (“by God and by Seint John”), once in evident imitation of the Host (“by Seint Ronyon”), once at the end of his Prologue (“by God”) and once in his Tale (“God woot”). “Seint John” may be read as an appropriate saint for pardoners to invoke, John being a stock nickname for secular and regular clerics, yet carries its own ironic implications as, of all things, St John stands for purity.9 The other oaths are all imitative. “Seint Ronyon” is a scabrous pun on the Host’s “Ronyan”.10 “By God” and particularly “God woot”, while common among the pilgrims, are most of all typic-al of the Wife of Bath. Thus, we find his sly echo “by God” in their brief clash in her early Prologue, while its later recurrence and his use of “God woot” may well be little telltale remains of the harder clash which they had at one time, when the Testament of Love was not yet conceived. What may have led to his mistaken identification as a great swearer is the fact that, of course, the Pardoner is a great vicarious swearer who gleefully parades the most terrible oaths in order to impress his gullible audiences when he preaches on this subject. But Swearing also stands for the casting of magic spells “as doon thise false enchauntours or nigromanciens in bacyns ful of water, 7

Robinson, p 667; Hamilton: 48-63; J.J. Jusserant, pp 312-14; Owst, Preaching, pp 251-74. 8 Miller, in Schoeck & Taylor, p 236; Tupper, Types of Society in Medieval Literature (1926; New York: Holt, 1968), p 98. 9 Hamilton: 53; John Gardner ed., [Cliffs Notes on] Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Lincoln, Nebraska: Cliffs Notes Inc, 1967, p 65. 10 Gerould, pp 10-12.

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or in a bright swerd, in a cercle, or in a fir, or in a shulder-boon of a sheep” [ParsT, 603]. This is something that we literally encounter, when the Pardoner mentions that he has “in latoun a sholder-boon/ Which that was of an hooly Jewes sheep” [PardP, 350-51] and which has magic healing properties, a sign if there ever was one. The Pardoner’s Lying springs from “fals signyficaunce of a word, in entente to deceyven his evene-Cristene”, which is what he is indeed attempting to effect with his preaching. With specific respect to his avarice, his lying is the sort that “turneth to the ese and profit of o man, and to disese and damage of another” [ParsT, 608]. Flattery is expressly admitted to: For certes, many a predicacioun Comth ofte tyme of yvel entencioun; Som for plesance of folk and flaterye. [PardP, 407-09]

This identifies him, in the Parson’s words, as one of “the develes enchantours; for they make a man to wene of hymself be lyk that he nys nat lyk./ They been lyk to Judas that bitraysen a man to selle hym to his enemy, that is to the devel./Flatereres been the develes chapelleyns, that syngen evere Placebo” [ParsT, 615-17]. Chiding may be thought to be present in the Pardoner’s admission that some people “wol I stynge [...] with my tonge smerte” [PardP, 413], but the passage is not really appropriate. Of the remaining sins, Scorn has been dealt with, just as Discord and Evil Counsel. All of us who further recognize that the Pardoner is well characterized as one of those who “maken semblant as though they speken of good entencioun, or elles in game and pley, and yet they speke of wikked entente” (which is basically hypocrisy) will be satisfied that he is guilty of the sin of Double Tonge, a most befitting sin for such a snaky customer [ParsT, 643]. Jangling properly belongs under Pride, but as we have dealt with this so obvious sin rather perfunctorily let us note that the entire confession is a piece of jangling whereby the Pardoner “speketh to muche biforn folk, and clappeth as a mille, and teketh no keep what he seith” [ParsT, 406], a sin that he shares with the Wife of Bath in a very obvious manner. The one sin remaining is Japerie. The Pardoner’s clowning in his Prologue is in perfect conformity with this sin and, again, very appropriately commented upon by the Parson:

306 | The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin Looke how that vertuouse wordes and hooly conforten hem that travaillen in the service of Crist, right so conforten the vileyns wordes and knakkes [tricks] of japeris hem that travaillen in the service of the devel [ParsT, 652].

The remedies for Anger are Debonairetee and Pacience or Suffrance, “a vertu that suffreth swetely every mannes goodnesse, and is nat wrooth for noon harm that is doon to hym” [ParsT, 659]. My italics refer to the Pardoner’s stinging words against whoever “hath trespased to my brethren or to me” and all the other tricks whereby he repays “folk that doon us displesances”; and also – but beyond the present scope of his confession – to his downfall at the end of his Tale. Sloth According to the basic definition of Sloth as “anoy of goodnesse and Ioye of harm” [ParsT, 678] the Pardoner is guilty of this sin and its first branch, Contrariness [ParsT, 687], which essentially stands for a refusal to be good. As his entire confession shows, he will be bad. As it is, this largely overflows into the next sin of Foregoing Good Works, upon which he is most outspoken: For [although] I wol preche and begge in sondry landes; I wol nat do no labour with myne handes, Ne make baskettes, and lyve thereby, By cause I wol nat beggen ydelly. I wol noon of the apostles countrefete; I wol have moneie, wolle, chese, and whete. [PardP, 443-448]

As with the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner’s guilt here lies most of all in his persistence in sin because this is so much easier: For myn entente is nat but for to wynne, And nothyng for correccioun of synne. [PardP, 403-04]

More broadly, the Pardoner’s sloth resides in his persistent refusal to accommodate the spiritual needs of his audiences, whom he sees as mere milch cows to be used for his own pleasure. Here, once again, we run into what we recognize as the overlapping nature of sin. The subject does get dealt with by the Parson, but under Avarice rather than Sloth. As a quaestor, actively in search of prey, the Par-

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doner is not a physically slothful person. The thing that is lacking is a spiritual drive, much in the same way that the Wife of Bath lacks one. Thus, the remaining subdivisions of Sloth that he is arguably guilty of are tarditas, lachesse and undevotion. Tarditas stands for postponing one’s submission to God, and this “comth of a fals hope, that he thynketh that he shal lyve longe; but that hope faileth ful ofte” [ParsT, 719]. The Pardoner’s submission is nowhere in sight and, for the time being, he is in an unmistakable state of this type of sinfulness. Lachesse is the sin of giving up on a good enterprise begun and does not sound very Pardoneresque, if it were not for the Parson’s addition that “Thise been the newe sheepherdes that leten hir sheep wityngly go renne to the wolf that is in the breres” [ParsT, 721]. Similarly, Undevotion [ParsT, 723] really applies to those so lethargic that they cannot set themselves to do their Christian duty, yet part of the Parson’s description is most suggestive of the Pardoner. What to think of the person who is so spiritually sluggish that he will “ne heere ne thynke of no devocioun, ne travaille with his handes in no good werk, that it nys hym unsavory and al apalled”? Surely this reminds us of the Pardoner’s refusal to follow the vita apostolica, the grist of which is in lines 444-45 when he ex-plains that he “wol nat do no labour with myne handes,/ Ne make baskettes, and lyve therby”. Once again, the remedies for the sin involved serve to underline their stark absence in the Pardoner. Fortitude, which is a virtue most effective against the Devil’s wiles, great courage, faith and hope, magnificence (which actually stands for great good works) and steadfastness of faith (“constaunce”) are the keywords here. None of them bear the faintest resemblance to the man from Rouncivale. Avarice In straight translation of the Pardoner’s motto Radix malorum est cupiditas the Parson informs us that “the roote of alle harmes is Coveitise” [ParsT, 739]. Knowing how guilty the Pardoner is on this score we may safely move on to its other manifestations. Avarice, according to our Parson, is a sort of lechery, namely “a likerousnesse in herte to have erthely thynges” [ParsT, 741]. Such a man is the Pardoner, who also conforms to the further definition of desiring “to purchacen manye erthely thynges, and no thyng yeven to hem that han nede”[ParsT, 742].

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After a lengthy discussion of thraldom (see Chapter Five), the Parson turns to the subject of Simony. Briefly mentioned above, simony is a terrible sin and it should be “understoond that bothe he that selleth and he that beyeth thynges espirituels been cleped symonyals” [ParsT, 784]. It is “the gretteste synne that may be, after the synne of Lucifer and Antecrist” [ParsT, 788]. The purveyors of “espiruteel marchandise”, such as the Pardoner, are “theeves that stelen the soules of Jhesu Crist and destroyen his patrimonye” [ParsT, 790]. Such a one is “the develes owene sone” and one that sells “the soules that lambes sholde kepen to the wolf that strangleth hem” [ParsT, 791-92]. Next come the so-called Sins of the Tavern, which figure prominently in the Pardoner’s Tale and of which the Pardoner, as a tavern haunter, is presumably guilty. The ones that are identifiable are deceit, “blasphemynge and reneiynge of God, and hate of his neighebores, wast of goodes, mysspendynge of tyme” [ParsT, 793]. The Pardoner’s deceitfulness is self-evident, his utter rejection of spirituality and use of God’s word for personal gain is entirely blasphemous, he hates everybody and wastes his money and time in pursuit of “licour of the vyne” and “a joly wenche in every toun”. It has been pointed out by others that the Pardoner’s avarice, though strongly emphasized by the repeated claim that he purely preaches his theme of cupiditas for selfish reasons, is not very well represented. This is borne out here, too, for this is where his involvement ends. All the same, it is clear that avarice figures as the Pardoner’s stock sin. As for the remedy for avarice, this is misericorde and pitee. His ruthless willingness to plunder “the povereste wydwe”, though her children may be dying of famine, is indication enough that no such virtues reside in his stony heart. Gluttony and Lechery In conformity with observation that “Venus and Bacchus [were] the patron saints of the pardoners”,11 the Pardoner is easily recognized as both a glutton and a lecher, yet the actual indications are meagre. The General Prologue mentions his “glarynge eyen [...] as an hare”, a physiognomical detail indicating a shameless man “given to folly, a 11

Kellogg & Haselmayer, p 264. Ethel regards the Pardoner’s lechery as a purely mental phenomenon: 226.

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glutton, a libertine, and a drunkard”12 and fittingly portrays him in the act of singing a lusty love-song “Com hider, love, to me!” Both the Introduction and the Prologue to his Tale repeat this sentiment. They emphasize his liking for drink and mention his having “a joly wenche in every toun”. The Pardoner’s association with taverns and the Tavern Sins that he deals with in his self-condemnatory sermon exemplum suggest that he is precisely the sort of “hasardour” against whom he preaches, together with all the related sins that Hasardy implies. The critics generally agree with this view. His sermon, often taken as somewhat rambling, is likely to be pronounced in a tavern, and sometimes regarded as indicative of his having had too much to drink.13 Literally, though, there is little more than his repeated reference to drink to indict him upon the score of undivided Gluttony, which the Parson describes as “unmesurable appetit to ete or to drynke, or elles to doon ynogh to the unmesurable appetit and desordeynee coveitise to eten or to drynke” [ParsT, 818]. Appropriately, such a person “ne may no synne withstonde. He moot been in servage of alle vices, for it is the develes hoord there he hideth hym and resteth” [ParsT, 821]. Possibly, he may be held guilty of drunkenness and immoderation, too, but this is where his Gluttony proper comes to an end. Similarly, the Pardoner’s Lechery depends solely on his remark about a wench in every town. It is no accident that the remark is made in one breath with one about his love of the “licour of the vyne”. It is not only the tavern association that we recognize here, but the Parson’s statement that the sins of gluttony and lechery are “so nigh cosyns that ofte tyme they wol nat departe” [ParsT, 836]. It also reminds us of the Wife of Bath whose gluttony and lechery are similarly fused into one sin and, beyond the Canterbury Tales, of Gower’s meagre treatment of the subject. For all this paucity of information, in the light of both the Pardoner’s physical state and his profession there is quite a bit to be discussed at this point. First of all, how are we to square the Pardoner’s status as a eunuchus ex nativitate with his boastful claim of wenches? Evidently, there is nothing wrong with his libido, so that we must assume him to be active sexually even though he is incapable of multiplication. “Sterile lust” is how Miller phrases it. Several critics, 12 13

Curry, p 57. For Gerould’s opposing view, see Chapter Eight.

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stressing Chaucer’s alternative for the Pardoner (“mare”), read him as a homosexual.14 This contradicts his outspoken desire for a “wenche in every toun”. Others, such as Ethel, prefer to regard his lechery as a mental thing.15 Still others dismiss the “geldyng or a mare” remark entirely and, taking his snide remark at the Wife of Bath (“I was aboute to wedde a wyf”) at face value, pronounce him to be a whole man.16 Needless to say, this is a view that is impossible to share. Chaucer’s qualifications of his pilgrims are manifest signs, to use the Pardoner’s own word, of what he wishes his audience to understand, while the Pardoner’s facetious words to the Wife are intended to convey something entirely different from wedding plans and wedding bells.17 As for the wench in every town, Deadly Sin remains Deadly Sin whether committed in the spirit or in the flesh, which makes the Pardoner guilty of Fornication, sexual activity unsanctioned by marriage. But there is more. The Pardoner is a quaestor, an itinerant preacher “of Rouncivale”, the Hospital of the Blessed Mary of Roncevall at Charing Cross. A great deal of ink has been spent through the years to prove him anything from a layman to a renegade Austin Canon or a Dominican Friar. Generally, pardoners were at least clericus, meaning that they were “literate, had received a church education, and the first tonsure”. Robinson is willing to settle for minor orders.18 The complicating factor here is that such houses as “Rouncivale” often employed pardoners from outside for fund-raising purposes and we know that this occurred at Roncevall. Thus it is unclear whether the Pardoner is to be read as belonging to the house or merely working for it. All the same, the five lines dealing with his hairdo at great and unusual length, terminated by the remark that “hood, for jolitee, wered he noon”, serve to remind all readers that hood he should have worn and tonsure he should have had. Accordingly, as a cleric of some sort, the Pardoner is guilty of Unchastity, a form of Avowtrie or Adultery which comes down to “the 14

Benson, p 824. Ethel: 226. 16 Brown, p 30 note 115. 17 See Chapters Four and Seven. 18 For an overview, cf Robinson, p 667 (also cf. p 730, note 416) and Benson, pp 824, 907. Dominican friar: Hinckley, pp 44-46. Austin canon: Hamilton, passim; Muriel Bowden, p 286; Kellog & Haselmayer, pp 251-74. A lay preacher: Neville Coghill and Christopher Tolkien eds, Chaucer: The Pardoner’s Tale (1958; London: Harrap, 1970), p 13. 15

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brekynge of [one’s] avow of chastitee” [ParsT, 892] by those who are “religious” or “been entred into ordre” [ParsT, 891]. Such a sin is most terrible, for thise ordred folk been specially titled to God, and of the special meignee [army, assembly] of God, for which, whan they doon deedly synne, they been the special traytours of God and of his peple; for they lyven of the peple, to preye for the the peple, and while they ben suche traitours, here preyer avayleth nat to the peple./Preestes been aungels, as by the dignitee of hir mysterye; but for sothe, Seint Paul seith that Sathanas transformeth hym in an aungel of light [Lucifer]./Soothly, the preest that haunteth deedly synne, he may be likned to the aungel of derknesse transformed in the aungel of light. He semeth aungel of light, but for sothe he is aungel of derknesse.[...] And therefore han swiche preestes, and hire lemannes eek that consenten to hir lecherie, the malisoun of al the court Cristien, til they come to amendement [ParsT, 894-96, 903].

In spite of the Pardoner’s generally meagre culpability in the fields of Gluttony and Lechery, it should be no surprise to us that their remedies fail to absolve him. He is not a man for abstinence or moderation in any of the forms that the Parson sums up as the way to deal with Gluttony [ParsT, 833-35]. Nor is he in any way ruled by chastity or “continence, that restreyneth alle the desordeynee moevynges that comen of flesshly talentes [urges]” [ParsT, 915]. As in the case of the Wife of Bath, we may note that none of the virtues accord with Chaucer’s portrait of the Pardoner, which is confirmation of the absence of any goodness in his person. In the black and white universe of Deadly Sin any serious sinfulness essentially encapsules all the Mortal Seven, just as true virtue must necessarily encompass virtue in all its manifestations. In literature, such as found with Chaucer, this is understood – hence villains like the Pardoner and heroines like Custance. All this identifies the Pardoner for what he is, the vetus homo, the unregenerate Adam who still goes on wandering through the world, “glaring with sterile lust out of his hare-like eyes”.19 As such, he is a perfect complement to the Wife of Bath. That this intentional on Chaucer’s part is difficult to doubt. If he is the vetus homo – and who can reasonably doubt this identification – she certainly is the vetus femina or Old Eve of “the oolde daunce”.

19

Miller: 241.

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The Pardoner’s Self-Indictment In the Wife of Bath’s case, it has been possible to trace her sins straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were, and come up with two full pages of self-incrimination. I should be sadly lacking in methodology if I did not subject the Pardoner’s confession to an identical scrutiny. Here, however, we ought to realize that it is not his Prologue but his Tale that was “parsonified” and that his Prologue is much briefer than the Wife’s. Thus, what we shall find is a scantier self-exposure than what the Wife of Bath’s case may have led some of us to expect. At the same time, the Pardoner’s self-will and the fashion in which he pits himself against the Deity are in very much the same spirit. In dealing with this, we shall adhere to the lines that were set out for the Wife of Bath. The Pardoner’s admissions must be either direct or in paraphrase and in the first person singular. We are, after all, dealing with confession. Inferential quotation, while very tempting in his case, is a matter that belongs with our earlier identification of his sins along the lines set out by the Parson. In a sense, this is a pity, for a large tract of his confession, running from lines 329 to 388, is about his deceitful practices. As a cleric (or, if one wishes, a would-be cleric), he is plainly guilty of simony, which goes well with the subject of deception, as both are sins that reside under Avarice.     

  

I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche [PardP, 330] = Pride (arrogance); By this gaude have I wonne, yeer by yeer,/A hundred mark sith I was pardoner [PardP, 389-90] = Pride (avauntynge), Avarice (simony, greed), Envy (deceit); I preche so as ye han herd bifoore,/And telle an hundred false japes moore [PardP, 393-94] = Avarice (simony), Anger (double tongue and japerie); For myn entente is nat but for to wynne,/And nothyng for correccioun of synne [PardP, 403-04] = Avarice (greed) and Sloth (necligence); I rekke nevere, whan that they been beryed,/Though that hir soules goon ablakeberyed! [PardP, 405-06] = Pride (impudence) and Sloth (reccheleesnesse or necligence); Thanne wol I stynge hym with my tonge smerte/In prechyng, so that he shal nat asterte/To been defamed falsly [PardP, 413-15] = Pride (hypocrisy), Avarice (simony), Envy (malignitee, disparagement and defamation); For thogh I telle noght his propre name,/Men shal wel knowe that it is the same/By signes, and by othere circumstances [PardP, 417-19] = Envy (defamation and disparagement); Thus quyte I folk that doon us displesances [PardP, 420], Thus spitte I out my venym under hewe/Of hoolynesse, to seemen hooly and trewe [PardP, 421] =

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Envy (joye of oother mannes harm, Anger (double tongue), Avarice (simony) and Pride (hypocrisy); I preche of no thyng but for coveityse [PardP, 424], Thus kan I preche agayn that same vice/Which that I use, and that is avarice [PardP, 427-28], But thogh myself be gilty in that synne,/Yet kan I maken oother folk to twynne/From avarice [PardP, 429-31], I preche nothyng but for coveityse [PardP, 433], For though myself be a ful vicious man,/A moral tale yet I yow telle kan,/Which I am wont to preche for to wynne [PardP, 459-61] = Avarice (simony and greed); What, trowe ye…/That I wol lyve in poverte wilfully? Nay, nay, I thoghte it nevere, trewely! [PardP, 439-442], I wol nat do no labour with myne handes,/ Ne make baskettes, and lyve therby,/By cause I wol nat beggen ydelly [PardP, 44446], I wol noon of the apostles countrefete [PardP, 447], I wol have moneie, wolle, chese, and whete,/Al were it yeven of the povereste page [PardP, 448-49] = Pride (impatience), Sloth (undevotion, and refusal to do good) and Avarice (greed); Nay, I wol drynke licour of the vyne [PardP, 452] = Pride (self-will, i.e. impatience) and Gluttony (unspecified); And [I wol] have a joly wenche in every toun [PardP, 453] = Pride (self-will, i.e. impatience) and Lechery (unspecified).

Once again, all the sins are there and once again, too, their overlapping nature makes it impossible to draw any clear conclusions on the exact order of their operation. An exception may be made for the funny two lines that directly precede the conclusion of the Prologue: Nay, I wol drynke licour of the vyne, And have a joly wenche in every toun. [PardP, 452-53]

These are such an evident afterthought and so badly aligned at that with the in toto picture of the Pardoner, particularly as provided by the General Prologue and its definition of the Pardoner as a geldyng or a mare, that one can easily visualize a Chaucer desirous to include, if only formally, the two sins that are otherwise conspicuous by their absence, and overlooking what he had written about him several years before or simply postponing an ultimate realignment. At the same time, they imply, as I have argued all along, that Chaucer was seriously bent upon showing up the Pardoner as someone subject to every possible type of sin. Unlike the Wife’s Prologue, there is no easy division here into separate blocks dealing with the major sins. It is true that such a passage as lines 352 to 388, which gives us the Pardoner’s description of how he literally dupes his audience, is all about the simoniac uses to which he puts his preaching. However, this simply spells Avarice as

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the sin involved and no great insight is required to discern that this is the main theme that prevails throughout the entire Prologue. All the same, with this insight in mind, the thing to strike us is the extent to which all the other sins appear to have been worked into the tapestry, even if some of the strands look hasty and none too carefully applied. Koeppel’s Evidence In discussing the Wife of Bath’s sins, we have learnt that Koeppel’s study on the authenticity of the Parson’s Tale comes up with a number of verbal correspondences, augmented by my own reading, that chiefly apply to the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. Those of us who may have expected a similar situation for the Pardoner’s Prologue, particularly in the light of Koeppel’s own finding that of all pilgrims the Pardoner exhibits the greatest debt to the Parson, will be disappointed. It is the Pardoner’s Tale that matters here and does so in a most interesting fashion.20 As Koeppel points out, the Pardoner and the Parson share such common denominators as St Jerome, Innocent III and John of Salisbury, all of whom indicate a genesis around 1390/ 91.21 Beyond this, they share quite a few parallels in their ordering and expression. As it turns out, almost all of these involve the Sins of the Tavern. Having in earlier chapters used this as part of our argument, we are here obliged to pause and pay good attention. The Introduction to the Pardoner’s Tale gives us: Wherfore I seye al day that men may see That yiftes of Fortune and of Nature Been cause of deeth to many a creature. [IntroPardT, 294-96]

This parallels the Parson’s words on Pride: “Whoso prideth hym in the goodes of fortune, he is a ful gret fool; for […] somtime the richesse of a man is cause of his deth” [471-72]. The Pardoner’s theme, Radix malorum est cupiditas [PardP, 334, 424] provides one of the three verbal echoes in his Prologue. The Parson has this under Avarice as “the roote of alle harmes is Coveit20 As in the Wife of Bath’s case, Koeppel’s referential framework for the Parson and Pardoner has become entirely obscure, so that I have taken the liberty of providing modern references to lines and paragraphs and of updating his text along the lines provided by Benson. 21 Koeppel: 39; see also Robinson, pp 730-31, Benson, pp 907-09 in support of this.

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ise” [739].22 He is slightly forgetful here, for (unnoticed by Koeppel) he claims the same for Pride: “Of thise sevene synnes […] is Pride the general roote of alle harmes”[387]. The second is the familiar passage about the sholder-boon: Thanne have I in latoun a sholder-boon Which that was of an hooly Jewes sheep. [PardP, 350-51]

The Parson deals with this under Anger as “thilke horrible sweryng of adjuracioun and conjuracioun, as doon thise false enchantours or nigromanciens in bacyns ful of water, or in a bright swerd, in a cercle, or in a fir, or in a shulder-boon of a sheep” [603]. The third instance, under Sloth, is undevocioun which gives us a person who may “ne heere ne thynke of no devocioun, ne travaille with his handes in no good werk” [722]. The Pardoner’s equivalent is: I wol nat do no labour with myne handes… I wol noon of the apostles countrefete. [PardP, 444, 447]

The Pardoner’s further words, which are on swearing, all belong to his Tale. The lines directly below are an echo of the Parson’s “muche worse is forsweryng falsly ”[600]: [Gret sweryng is a thyng abhominable, And]23 fals sweryng is yet moore reprevable. [PardT, 631-32]

Better yet are the Parson’s next lines on swearing: God seith: “Thow shalt nat take the name if thy Lord God in veyn or in ydel.” Also oure Lord Jhesu Crist seith, by the word of Seint Mathew,/ “Ne wol ye nat swere in alle manere…”/…as seith Jeremye, quarto capitulo: “Thou shalt kepe three condicions: thou shalt swere in trouthe, in doom, and in rightwisnesse.” [588-89, 592].

With the Pardoner we read this: “Taak nat my name in ydel or amys.” The heighe God forbad sweryng at al, 22 23

Both this instance and the next are mine and not found in Koeppel. Koeppel also claims the bracketed words, but they provide no clear correspondence.

316 | The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin Witnesse on Mathew; but in special Of sweryng seith the hooly Jeremye, “Thou shalt swere sooth thyne othes, and nat lye, And swere in doom, and eek in rightwisnesse”. [PardT, 642, 633-37]

The Parson says under Anger: “And thynk wel this: that ‘every greet swerere, nat compelled lawefully to swere, the wounde shal nat departe from his hous’” [593]. The Pardoner follows him closely: And forther over, I wol thee telle al plat That vengeance shal nat parten from his hous That of his othes is to outrageous. [PardT, 648-50]

Almost in the same spot, the Parson comes up with: “For Cristes sake, ne swereth nat so synfully in dismembrynge of Crist by soule, herte, bones, and body. For certes, it semeth that ye thynke that the cursed Jewes ne dismembred nat ynough the preciouse persone of Crist, but ye dismembre hym moore” [591]. This corresponds exceptionally well with two passages in the Pardoner’s Tale: Hir othes been so grete and so dampnable That it is grisly for to heere hem swere. Oure blissed Lordes body they totere – Hem thoughte that Jewes rente hym noght ynough. [PardT, 472-75] And many a grisly ooth thanne han they sworn, And Cristes blessed body they torente. [PardT, 708-09]

Hasardrie is introduced by the Parson as follows. “Now cometh hasardrie […], of which comth deceite, false othes, chidynges, and alle ravynes, blasphemynge and reneiynge of God, […] wast of goodes, mysspendynge of tyme, and somtyme manslaughtre” [793]. With the Pardoner, this becomes: Hasard is verray mooder of lesynges, And of deceite, and cursed forswerynges, Blaspheme of Crist, manslaughtre, and wast also Of catel and of tyme… [PardT, 591-94]

The Pardoner’s “Corrupt was al this world for glotonye” [PardT, 504] repeats the Parson’s introduction of Gluttony: “This synne corrumped al this world” [819]. This is followed up by:

The Pardoner’s Confession of Sin | 317 Looke eek what seith Saint Paul of Glotonye:/‘Manye,’ seith Saint Paul, ‘goon, of whiche I have ofte seyd to yow, and now I seye it wepynge, that been the enemys of the crois of Crist; of whiche the ende is deeth, and of whiche hire wombe is hire god and hire glorie in confusioun of hem that so savouren erthely thynges’ [819-20].

The Pardoner says this: The apostel wepyng seith ful pitously, “Ther walken manye of whiche yow toold have I – I seye it now wepyng, with pitous voys – They been enemys of Cristes croys, Of whiche the ende is deeth; wombe is hir god!” [PardT, 529-33]

The Parson continues with “Dronkenesse, that is the horrible sepulture of mannes resoun” [822] and “bireveth hym the discrecioun of his wit” [824]. We find these two combined in the Pardoner’s lines: For dronkeness is verray sepulture Of mannes wit and his discrecioun. [PardT, 558]

The interesting thing about all these correspondences is that their derivation from the Parson’s Tale is quite clear.24 Moreover, while the textual echoes in the Pardoner’s Tale are all found with the Tavern Sins, the relevant passages in the Parson’s Tale come from two small blocks: Anger 588-603 and Gluttony 819-24. The exception is Avarice 793, which is easily understood, as this is about “hasardrie with his apurtenaunces”, which itself may be an interpolation with an eye to the Pardoner’s Tale. If we compare these findings with the Wife of Bath, we see an analogous approach. In her case, the new prologue was fitted out, among other things, with a large block on serial marriage and dealing with Pride. This was placed right at the beginning, thus compelling Chaucer to split up the invitation to the Wife, drop part of it (the Man of Law’s end-link) and reassign the Host’s part to the Pardoner. Here, with the Pardoner, we find that the Tavern Sins appear to have been inserted immediately after the Tale’s opening, in a fashion reminiscent of the Wife’s situation. 24

I have left out Koeppel’s final instance which links the Parson’s remark on the closeness of Gluttony and Lechery [836] and the Pardoner’s lines 481-82, which make the same observation. Though they are similar in content, there is nothing to link their language. As Benson indicates, p 907 n 481-82, their association was commonplace.

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What we should not fail to note here is that the block on Anger has no equivalent in either Quoniam or Primo, the most direct sources to date that we possess for the Parson’s Tale,25 whereas the one on Gluttony does. This confirms that Chaucer was very probably basing himself here on the Parson’s Tale, since it is not very logical to suppose him to have been working from two disparate sources when these are found together in the Parson’s Tale, which we assume to have been composed shortly before his rewriting of the Pardoner’s Tale. Furthermore, the entire passage on the Tavern Sins, which runs from line 465 or thereabouts to 660, is at the same time the sole place in the Pardoner’s Tale where we find quotation from Innocent’s De miseria condicionis humane, St Jerome’s Epistola adversus Jovinianum and John of Salisbury’s Polycraticus. This makes them determiners, not so much of the date of the tale’s inclusion as of its rewriting and associates it with the date of 1391 that was proposed in Chapter Two for the presentation of the Testament of Love with its various tales that involve De miseria and the Adversus Jovinianum. In particular it constitutes a manifest link with the opening block of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, which is riddled with reference to St Jerome, and its Anger & Envy, Lechery and Sloth blocks, which similarly cite him though with lesser frequency.

25

Wenzel, ‘Source’: 363-64.

7. The Wife of Bath’s Sermon Fourteenth-Century Sermon Practice We know that Chaucer was not averse to applying pulpit material in the telling of his tales. Thus, the Man of Law refers to Chaucer’s stories in the Legend of Good Women as sermons. Likewise it is easily recognized that the Pardoner’s Tale includes, among other things, a sample sermon which he uses to illustrate the theme of cupiditas. Not so familiar is the view that the Wife of Bath is just as much engaged in preaching a sermon of her own to the pilgrims, although it has been long recognized that the first 162 lines of her Prologue are along actual sermon lines, her tale is plainly used as a sermon exemplum (just like Gower’s slightly earlier tale of Florent) and her portrait drawn extensively and almost exclusively from pulpit literature.1 It is one of this study’s major contentions that in both cases a sermon structure is present which, though not run-of-the-mill, is far closer to fourteenth-century practice than has been commonly recognized. A major obscuring factor here is and has been the confessional element in the prologues of the Wife and the Pardoner. In allowing that the two of them are actually engaged in autobiographical confession, Chaucer scholarship at large has been inclined to overlook the possibility that on another level their confessions should be intended literally as the enumeration of their sins or, on still another level, be read as sermon elements that basically serve as ante-theme and dilation. The latter failure is hardly surprising. Confessional sermons never existed as a separate type in Chaucer’s day. Thus, his adaptation of regular sermon structure to the demands of such an ambitious approach naturally resulted in a measure of deviation from actual sermon practice which has been instrumental in obscuring our recognition of their homiletic nature. In the past decades, however, there have been signs that Chaucer criticism is slowly unbending and coming around to accepting sermon elements in various places, even if no unifying view has so far been presented. It has even been argued that the Wife’s 1

Cf Benson, p 864-65; Robinson, p 7; Robertson, p 329; Makarewicz, p 217.

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Prologue constitutes a mock sermon,2 which comes close to my argument. It goes without saying that the intricacy of the situation and the most unusual fusion of confession and sermon elements within the Wife’s and Pardoner’s cases point directly to Gower. The need for sermonizing, in the footsteps of Christ and Paul, was affirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, much like that of confession and penitence, with which it is closely associated. As with these two, the result was a marked upswing in the demand for practical handbooks.3 The great authority is once again St Augustine, who played a major role in fusing Christian preaching and classical rhetor2

On the mock sermon, see Lee Patterson, ‘“For the Wyves Love of Bathe”: Feminine Rhetoric and Poetic Resolution in the Roman de la Rose and the Canterbury Tales’, Spec 58 (1983): 674-80. Some scholars have come close to recognizing the three standard levels of a medieval sermon. Thus Gilliam points out two levels of reading, one with the Wife’s exhortation to “embrace sexual appetite” (what we shall come to know as her marriage advertisement – the sense) and another on Chaucer’s condemnation of sin, an interpretation extracted from the discussion of gentilesse and echoes of Boethius and Dante (the sentence). D. Gilliam. “Cast up the Curtyn” (in: Proceedings of the Twelfth Congress of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, ed. A. P. Treweek (Sydney: AULLA, 1970): 435-55. Holland goes one further by distinguishing three layers of meaning – a modern, a medieval and a mystical one, but his argument for a psychoanalytical meaning underlying all is not credible. Norman N. Holland. ‘Meaning as Transformation: The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, CE 28 (1967): 279-90. Close, too, though arguing from a very different point of view, comes Sanders (437-45), who, in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, identifies a wealth of sermon elements including “degenerate pulpit rhetoric” but fails to recognize the existence of further levels and gets stuck in a superficial reading of it all as a “burlesque” with the Wife’s providing a satire of clerical preaching. An interesting note has been sounded by Bernard S. Levy who argues that the Tale must actually be read in two ways: the one, the way in which the Wife expects the audience to understand her Tale, and another, the way in which the Tale inadvertently backfires on the Wife. Bernard S. Levy, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Queynte Fantasye’, ChauR 4 (1970): 106-22, esp. note 17. With respect to the Wife’s audience, there is no question of her message being misunderstood, as she makes her wishes apparent to all and sundry loud and clear. Nor is the inadvertency of the “backfiring”, in my reading, any such thing. What Miller and Levy have evidently latched unto is the sentence, whereby, with reference to the Parson as Chaucer’s key to the Tales, the implication of the Wife’s several heresies emerges in various places through the signs that have been royally scattered about (see the rest of this chapter). 3 This upswing is noted by James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkely/Los Angeles/ London: U of California P, 1974). He writes that “within twenty years of 1200 a whole new rhetoric of preaching leaped into prominence” (p 310) but lays no link with the “Great” Council.

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ic. Other names are St Gregory and Alain de Lille (Alanus de Insulis), but it is not until well into the thirteenth century that we find new theories of preaching developed by such men as Thomas of Salisbury and others and learn of their application at the medieval universities – whence their common appellation as the modernus ordus praedicandi or “new, or modern, university type”.4 Though Thomas’ organization is different from the sermon’s subsequent development, it already includes all the basic requirements of a university-style sermon: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Opening prayer for divine aid Pro-theme (antetheme), or introduction of the theme Theme, or statement of a Scriptural quotation Division, or statement of parts of the theme Development (prosecutio) of the members named in the division 6. Conclusion (not an integral part of the sermon)5 Not all books were on the construction of sermons. Humbert of Romans’ Treatise on Preaching, for instance, is all about the desired qualities and life-style of the preacher.6 The state of the English ars in Chaucer’s day was perfected by Thomas Wal(l)eys and Robert of Basevorn in particular. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that they laid down a rigid pattern for the priests and friars to follow. There was considerable leeway, particularly as to the lesser requirements of the sermon, and there was a whole arsenal of rhetorical devices to be ap-plied after one’s own liking, a good listing of which is found in Murphy’s reproduction of the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, Book IV.7 Thus, when next we turn to Manly’s sermon summary, which follows Owst’s outline,8 we should take care to regard it as a simplified approximation only. Citing Manly, Benson enumerates as the six regular parts of a formal medieval sermon:9 “(1) theme; (2) pro-theme, a kind of introduction; (3) dilatation, exposition of the text; (4) exemplum, illustra4

Murphy, pp 286-92, 310 Murphy, p 317. 6 Humbert of Romans, passim. 7 Murphy, pp 365-74 8 Owst, Preaching, pp 326-34. 9 Benson, p 905 5

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tion by anecdote; (5) peroration, or application; (6) closing formula”. Naturally, this is too concise to be really helpful, so let us take a closer look. Let us also keep in mind that there was considerable variety in the way sermons were constructed in Chaucer’s day. As Robert F. Merrix says, “a perfect medieval sermon, just as a perfect First Folio of Shakespeare, does not exist except as an abstraction”.10 The first element of a late fourteenth-century sermon – the “modern university type” sermon – is the announcement of the theme, or text from the Bible. “This theme may be taken from the lesson, the epistle, or the gospel of that day, with the exception of the very solemn days, such as Easter, Whitsunday, or the like. For then, because many are wont to preach, they may take their theme as they wish”.11 The Wife and Pardoner, preaching at Lent, belong to this latter class. The next element is prayerful invocation whose purpose “was to capture the good will (“captare benevolentiae”) of the audience while invoking divine aid”.12 Then there is the protheme, also known as ante-theme or prologus. Here the announced theme is explored further, preferably – just as later in the sermon – through the introduction of something that will hold the listeners’ attention. It “consisted of a second quotation, usually scriptural, not necessarily from the day’s liturgy, but on a topic relevant to the sermon’s general message, which was briefly discussed. The protheme may have served as a transition section, or as an artful rhetorical digression”.13 Owst mentions that the prothemes were of the briefest pattern, in which the preacher’s call to intercession is directly followed by the repetition of ‘Pater’ and ‘Ave’ by all present: ‘Devoto corde simul omnes offeramus Christo orationem docuit, et matri ejus ac virgini salutationem angelicam, qua illum ipsa concepit, dicentes pr.nr.[patrum nostrum], et ave...’14

In actual fact, prothemes are a bit of a puzzle. As Briscoe points out, “very few surviving sermon texts have clearly identifiable prothemes yet they are discussed in almost every preaching manual”.15 10

Merrix : 235-49. Owst, Preaching, citing Waleys, p 316. 12 Marianne G. Briscoe, Artes Praedicandi (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), p 55. 13 Briscoe, p 55. 14 Owst, Preaching, p 317, citing MS Lansd. 393, fol. 27 (Fitzralph). 15 Briscoe, p 55. 11

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As the sermon’s third element there is a brief restatement of the text. This serves to introduce its next stage, which is the dilat(at)ion or exposition of the text, also referred to as the processus. “An almost infallible indication that the ante-theme has ended and the processus of the theme has begun is afforded by a clear repetition of the text: ‘After the prayer, the principal theme ought to be repeated again. Then let some brief, fitting introduction be made, so that the theme may seem to have been opened in a reasonable fashion’”.16 At this point when the medieval preacher is expected to expand into the processus of his theme he is advised “so far as he can without giving offence to God, [to] win the goodwill of his hearers, rendering them apt to hear, and eager to pursue his words to the end”.17 This can be done by describing “something strange, subtle, and curious, or else by startling them into attention with some terrible anecdote”, such as devil-stories, deathbed scenes, and hell’s torments.18 Basically the dilation (processus) consists of the three socalled divisiones of the theme which in their turn may be further subdivided.19 Owst explains matters thus: From the making of divisions for the ‘processus thematis’ following there can be no escape. When a sermon is based upon an ordinary text of Scripture, the task of extracting three convenient ideas, upon which to hang the rest of the discourse does not appear very difficult. For three, with that characteristic mediaeval love of symbolic numbers perhaps, is a regular choice for the main ‘divisio’. If ‘Dies Mali Sunt’ be your theme, for example, you may observe a threefold evil, which flourishes in these days, to wit ‘excessus voluptatis’, ‘defunctus sanitatis’, and ‘contemptus humilitatis.’ [In this connection the preacher is further advised to] deliver a detailed account of the sinner’s state and its dangers, with special reproofs.20

From here the sermon moves into more familiar waters. It is now time for the major exemplum, preferably a graphic and stirring tale, drawn from “the Fathers, the Histories, the Exemplaria” but also from any other source – as long as the doctrinal message can be put across.21 Gower’s tales in the Confessio Amantis are a good demon16

Owst, Preaching, pp 319-20, citing MS Add. 21202. Owst, Preaching, p 320, citing MS Bodl. 5, fol. 12. 18 Owst, Preaching, p 321, citing MS Harl. 2398, fol. 91. 19 Briscoe, p 56. 20 Owst, Preaching, p 321-22, citing Waldeby, MS Caius, Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 195b. 21 Owst, Preaching, p 330, citing Higden, Forma Pred., MS Bodl. 5, fols. 16-26b; 17

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stration of this. As Owst sums it up, there are four types of sermon exemplum. Some are “from men and things in the current everyday scene”, then there is “allegorical figure of speech, often Scriptural in origin but non-Scriptural in its development”, other stories can be found with “Biblical hero and saint” and, finally, there is the commonest type of exemplum: “the moralized anecdote, whether historically true or fictitious, drawn from sources both ancient and contemporary, secular as well as religious”.22 Obviously, too, the exemplum is always an expanded illustration of the sermon’s theme. Emphatic preaching, of course, was also expected throughout but particularly at the end of the sermon. “The tactical preacher has probably taken care to leave as his parting impression the bold, stark outline of future penalties and future bliss”.23 This ought to be clear most of all in the penultimate sermon element: the peroration or application of the lesson, a brief summing up of what the sermon’s theme comes down to in terms of sin and redemption. This is then followed by the coda or closing formula, a sort of post-theme complement to the pro-theme, whereby God, Christ, Mary or the Saints are invoked to stand by their people. It should be understood, however, that these final two elements are only cursorily defined: “While virtually every manual from the fourteenth century onward sets out to discuss the parts of a sermon, and most provide lengthy explanations on various methods of expanding sermons, almost no attention is given to ending them. Those who do treat the topic, Thomas Waleys and Robert Basevorn, for example, simply advise that a fitting prayer be offered. Surviving preaching texts are similar in their inattention to the sermon’s ending”.24

Any serious sermon text preached to a reasonably educated but mixed public was expected to encompass three levels of understanding: the letter (the obvious, superficial meaning – also known as the integumentum); the sense, “the final meaning of a text achieved through exposition”, which is what a modern reader would call the message; and the sentence, which is the doctrinal implication, the exegetical lesson or, as we would say, what the theme comes down to in Walleys, MS Harl. 635, fol. 176. 22 Owst, Literature & Pulpit, p 149. 23 Owst, Preaching, p 330. 24 Briscoe, pp 57-58.

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terms of good and evil, sin and redemption.25 The idea behind this was that it enabled each level of the preacher’s audience to be edified. In the case of Chaucer’s public it is safe to assume that the majority of them would have been capable of perceiving the presence of deeper levels of meaning. The Pardoner’s Tale, which draws us directly into the realm of the metaphysical, shows how well this could be effected. Theoretically, the final exegetical aspect ought to be identifiable in the peroration, which deals with the same lesson. Of course, no preacher was expected to achieve a continuous web of interpretation for all aspects of these three levels. What he did was select certain details from his context upon which he then constructed the interpretation that was preached to his hearers.26 This selection of details is firmly linked to a final aspect characteristic of medieval sermons. This is the insertion of signs, broad hints to the preacher’s public in order to make them understand that what the preacher said was something different from what he meant. We know about signs in the Canterbury Tales since the Pardoner explicitly discusses their use.27 They were a popular pastime among preachers in the late Middle Ages. Chaucer loves them, too. A sign “is a thing – a word or an object – which is used to signify something else”. It could be used in bono, in a positive sense, or in malo, in a negative sense.28 All this is bound up with the threefold layering of a professional sermon. In the words of St Augustine, who is the propagator if not inventor of signs, “one thing signifies another and still another in such a way that the second thing is entirely different from the first. The things signified are contrary, that is, when one thing is used in a similitude in a good sense and in another place in an evil sense. [...] In the same way other things signify not one thing but more, and not only two diverse things, but sometimes many different things in accordance with the meaning of passages in which they are found”.29 A good instance of a sign, though not used in a sermon context, is the Wife of Bath’s description in the General Prologue as “somdel deef”: her physical handicap is an intentional pointer to her spiritual 25

Hugh of St Victor, as cited by Robertson, pp 315-16. Robertson, p 299. 27 The fact that he does so is of course itself a sign for any audience to prick their ears and listen very carefully to what he has to say. 28 Robertson, p 297. 29 Robertson, pp 295-97. See also Murphy on St Augustine’s words on signs. 26

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deafness.30 A similar sign is the word “scarlet” in the same portrait. Comparable also are her love of ostentation, her extensive pilgrimaging and her insistence on precedence in church. These are, of course, also matters of medieval estates satire but this can hardly be a problem, considering how extensively such satire drew upon Scripture and other works of theology.31 In the absence of any explicit exposition on Chaucer’s part as to the exact sentence that he has in mind, it goes without saying that the identification and interpretation of signs shall be major guidelines in the pages to come. As noted before, there is a wealth of further devices that could be – and were – applied to make the sermon more effective, such as repetitio, conversio, complexio, tractio and many more, but these are all a matter of a rhetorical rather than a purely homiletic apparatus.32 In looking back upon the sermon framework that we have just discussed, the facts that ought to strike us are that the medieval handbooks are none too clear on the exact outline of a modern university sermon, and the surviving sermons from this period are not easily analysed as possessing all the parts that they should include. The sermon’s protheme remains veiled in obscurity, and so do the concluding elements that follow the major exemplum. Thus, when in this chapter and the next we shall analyse the homiletic nature of what the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner say, we ought to bear in mind that the outline sketched above comes down to a more or less ideal sermon. In applying it, we should be prepared to allow for a considerable degree of variation. Having made this concession, the remarkable fact is that it is unnecessary. We shall find Chaucer to be a stickler for sermonizing rules. All the sermon elements are there and wherever he departs from the norm he remains well within the boundaries of good preaching. At the end of the day, this means that the sermons preached by the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner may be closer to technical perfection than any comparable true sermon from the same period. The Wife of Bath’s Gowerian Theme A notable Gower-related detail in the Wife of Bath’s sermon is her theme, which she announces in the following way: 30

Cf Melvin Storm. ‘Alisoun’s Ear’, MLQ 42 (1981): 219-26. Cf Mann, pp 122-25. 32 Murphy, 365-74. 31

The Wife of Bath’s Sermon | 327 Experience, though noon auctoritee Were in this world, is right ynogh for me To speke of wo that is in mariage. [WBP, 1-3]

The source for the first two lines is the Roman de la Rose,33 but for the theme itself in the third line no source has been identified. These words immediately call to mind Innocent’s twin concepts of “Ioye after wo” and “wo after gladnesse” in De miseria humane condicionis, upon which they may well be based. It is a theme that Chaucer had used before, as “the sorwe [ ... ] in lovynge, how his aventures fellen/Fro wo to wele [happiness], and after out of joie” in his Troilus [Book I, 3-4] and literally as “Joye after wo, and wo after gladnesse” in the Knight’s Tale [2841]. More importantly, however, he had also applied it with good effect to the theme of marriage in the Man of Law’s Tale. Its reapplication is certainly intended to make one pay attention. It is worked out in fine detail in the Wife’s Prologue and is clearly present in her Tale and picked up again later in the Marriage Debate, most plainly so in the Merchant’s Tale when, in contrast to Januarie’s vision of a wife as “paradys”, Justinus suggests that she may turn out to be his “purgatorie” [line 1670]. All the same, the opening lines of Book I of the Confessio Amantis, where Gower announces its theme, provide a most attractive source to have spurred Chaucer into taking this up from a new perspective. Admittedly, we are talking about a thematic commonplace, yet its nearness to Gower in time, place and general context is not something that we can simply dismiss. This is when Genius makes his first appearance and the entire confessing business is set into motion. The first voice here is his, as Priest, the second is Gower’s: ... ‘Benedicite’, Mi Sone, of the felicitee Of love and ek of al the wo Thou schalt thee schrive of bothe tuo. [ConfAm, Liber I, 205-08] ... With full gret contricioun I seide thanne: ‘Dominus, Min holi fader Genius, So as thou hast experience Of love, for whose reverence Thou schalt me schriven at this time, 33

Benson, p 865 note 1-2.

328 | The Wife of Bath’s Sermon I prai the let me noght mistime Mi schrifte, for I am destourbed In al myn herte... [ConfAm, Liber I, 214-22]

For love substitute marriage, which is after all a - if not the – major theme in Chaucer, and the Wife’s opening lines of her Prologue become a simple paraphrase of the italicized words exchanged by Amans and Genius. Moreover, to find comprised within less than fifteen lines a reference to the latter’s experience of love is uncannily reminiscent of the Wife’s opening line. It may be added that such a reading also has the advantage of accounting for the puzzling beginning of Wife of Bath’s Prologue. She sounds as if she is reacting to some sort of debate on experience vs authority. Once we accept that her words are directed at the Confessio Amantis there is much that falls into place. They show that she is not just addressing her present audience but Gower as well. What she appears to do, in fact, is take on the mantle of Genius’ experience and, like him, twist orthodox doctrine, so as to absolve herself from any guilt on the subject of “the felicitee/Of love and ek of al the wo”. What contributes to reading Amans’ words as the Wife’s source is the unusual fact that they also initiate a confession along the familiar lines of the Seven Deadly sins, which is exactly what we also find here at the start of the Wife’s Prologue. Her performance is a matter of confession which runs along the same lines, a point whose correctness is emphatically underlined by her subsequent speech. Also, this reading provides a natural explanation for the facility which allows her to switch from “wo” to the “felicitee” of her bedchamber in the course of her Prologue. As Chaucer’s discussion of marriage repeats Gower’s own favoured position on the subject, what we hear is likely to be an echo from him, presenting us with the announcement of an almost identical theme that fits remarkably well in a context that is already markedly indebted to Gower. Thus, within a situation indicative of a Gowerian inspiration, we have just run into Gower’s own introductory theme of a lover’s shrift according to the woe and felicity of love, thematically anticipated by the Man of Law’s Tale (but perhaps interpolated later?) and paraphrased here as “the wo that is in mariage”. And we have found it accompanied by the significant catchword experience, as the preferred basis for confession by the Wife, in further conformity with Gower. Among other things, this provides a strong indication of a

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Gowerian source for line 3 of the Wife’s Prologue. Now let us consider matters a bit further. Is it not a notable thing to find that, in a work by Chaucer that is his supposed answer to a challenge to rewrite the Canterbury Tales in a more Gowerian and confessional vein, the very first lines contain two apparent references to the basis upon which Gower in Book I introduces the entire matter of a lover confessing to his sins against the laws of love, only to prepare the way for a self-evident lover like the Wife of Bath to confess to all her successes and transgressions on the very same subject? In a sense, Chaucer may be argued to have made off here with the Confessio’s basic theme and adapted it to someone who, unlike Amans, is entirely unrepentant about her sins against the laws of love. One possible way of accounting for this is that Chaucer may be implying that, for all his confession, Gower has failed to convince him of the sincerity of the work. Other avenues worth considering are a desire to demonstrate that “life is not like this” and, more entertainingly, to show what all the courtly posturing comes down to if Amans were replaced by a female of the species as Venus’ true representative. The distinction made between authority and experience indicates in what direction to look. Authority, standing for the Bible and other holy texts, refers to spiritual wisdom, which we find with Gower as resoun or reason. Experience, on the other hand, depends upon temporal knowledge gained through the senses, as typified by kinde. As Venus’ man, Genius, hearing confession of the Lover’s sins against the rules of courtly love, naturally does so on a basis of experience. But this occasionally puts him in an uncomfortable situation when he must deal with sin from the Christian point of view, which is when he should draw upon authority, thus leaving him in “the anomalous position of – for instance – defending incest against the Church”.34 This dilemma is evidently part of the point of the Wife of Bath’s remark about “auctoritee”. Implicitly comparing her theme to Gower’s, Chaucer agrees that, if experience was sufficient for Genius to speak of the woe that is in love, it surely is so for her to speak of the 34

Tiller, p 11. Tiller’s remark is entirely to the point, referring to the familiar Canacee and Apollonius of Tyre matter. For an exact understanding of the Priest’s role, see Denise Baker, p 156. She discusses the two vantage points from which Genius operates: kinde and reson. “The law of kinde which Gower’s Venus represents is morally ambiguous, for the sexual act which she incites can either be subject to reason and therefore moral or subverted by lust and thus immoral”.

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woe that is in marriage. The additional “thogh no auctoritee were in this world” could be a little barb – Chaucer wondering aloud if, in the light of his subject matter, Gower ought not to have been a bit more orthodox and turned to ecclesiastical authority for his preaching. Ironically, the reference to experience – as a very physically heaved sigh about the things that the Wife has lived through in the course of her marriages – is directly followed up by an extensive tour of almost 160 lines past the great authorities on this favourite subject of hers. All the same, let us keep in mind that Genius’ exposition on sin from both a courtly and a religious point of view is not as anomalous as it seems. Even though his position obliges him to side with Venus, there is a running argument – particularly noticeable in Book III – that the amorality of kinde, which is what she stands for, ought to be leavened by reason.35 Experience and authority are implicit aspects of this – experience referring to the world as we get to know it through our senses, authority being the higher guidance that provides spiritual insight. Thus, the Wife of Bath is also advocating, in a reversal of Gower’s position and through the ironic application of what is made to look like reason, that we should let ourselves be guided by our natural inclinations and leave authority for what it is, incomprehensible and against the human grain. Even if the Confessio is something in between a temporal and a spiritual source, we have seen that the Wife’s taking her theme from this source is well within the bounds of permissibility. It takes place on one of those occasions – Lent – when preachers were permitted to take their theme as they liked.36 Yet strictly speaking, her theme is daringly heterodox, since it is not God or Christ, Mary or the Saints whom she invokes but her own experience. This is something that she gives us advance notice of before even introducing her actual theme: “Experience, though noon auctoritee were in this world, is ryght ynogh for me”. To a careful listener this would have been enough to know what to expect – the world, the flesh and the devil. Experience and authority, kinde and resoun – these are elements familiar from the Confessio and plainly addressed here. All the same, there is another point of reference in the shape of the Man of Law’s Tale. This expansive restatement of Gower’s Custance, remade into a lay saint’s life, is a perfect point of departure for the Wife’s statement. 35 36

Denise Baker, passim. Owst, Preaching, p 316.

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Custance’s suffering is all about experience, her exemplary conduct serves to turn her into authority as a faultless guide to spiritual selfimprovement, and her “Ioye after wo” and its reverse are perfectly suited to introduce the Wife’s own theme. If in our present editions of the Canterbury Tales there seems to be no authorized passage to smooth the way from Man of Law to Wife of Bath, with the exception of Fisher’s version, this is probably due to the extensive overhaul of tales that we have discussed in Chapters Two and Four, to new plans on the tale order and to a postponed final redaction that was not to be. The Wife of Bath’s Sermon It is one of my contentions that the Wife’s Prologue and Tale conform to the rules of the “modern university-type” sermon. In order to appreciate this, it should be understood that, just as in the Pardoner’s case to come, we are not speaking of a genuine sermon, but of an imitation that attempts to strike a balance between homiletic and literary requirements by following the rules of the former and bending them to those of the latter. It is no difficult matter to trace the successive stages of the Wife of Bath’s sermon. Its structure is this: 1- 3 5 4- 8 9- 162 172- 179 163- 828 857- 1105 1106- 1258 1258- 1264

theme prayerful invocation expansion of the theme ante-theme restatement of the theme dilation (divisiones) major exemplum application closing formula (coda)

The theme is the “wo that is in mariage”, with experience as her guideline. This makes her sermon unorthodox in its refusal to take its text from the Bible but falls well within the limits that Waleys sets for Lent predications. Its continuation in lines 4 to 8 is non-standard, but effective. Doubtless, part of the divergence is attributable to the demands of a literary text, but on the whole the opening looks like something that comes close to what actual sermons must have been like. Chaucer manages to include a single line to satisfy the formal requirement of prayerful invocation: “Thonked be God that is eterne on lyve” [line 5]. He follows this up with another text, properly bib-

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lical this time, on the Cana wedding. From here [line 9] the impious Wife’s antetheme continues to 162 as a running argument seeking to show why her experience should be accounted suffficient authority to vie with orthodox opinion on the subject of marriage and virginity. Once this is done, her real sermon can safely be launched. Her treatment of the various anti-marriage arguments that were popular in her day is done in a spirit of here-and-now common sense vs their traditional interpretation. At the end she rephrases her theme as her “tribulacion withal upon [the husband’s] flessh” [WBP, 156-57] and again, after the Pardoner’s interruption, “tribulacion in mariage, of which I am expert in al myn age” [173-74], whereby the concept is plainly extended to include a sexual dimension. Note the tripartite fashion – so typical of late medieval preaching – in which the theme is dealt with. In line 163 the sermon is livened up by the Pardoner stepping in to poke fun at her theme of marriage. This enables Chaucer to repeat the sermon’s theme and gives him an excuse to let the Wife launch into her account of her five marriages, giving him a chance to set the three divisiones of the dilation into motion: marriage and its implications. There are three subdivisions in conformity with the rules of preaching. These are 1) marriage to old husbands, pleasantly divisible by three again, 2) marriage to a good-for-nothing fourth, and 3) marriage to Jankyn. They coincide with what is recognizably her confession, continuing up to line 828 when the Friar interrupts, remarking that this has been “a long preamble of a tale”, which is certainly so. It is worth noting here that it is the shady clerics who comment on the Wife’s Prologue, they being the ones to recognize what the Wife is up to.37 This is particularly true of the Pardoner, who with an oath, “By God and by seint John!”, starts up and exclaims that she has been “a noble prechour in this cas”. Here is the homiletic expert of the entire Canterbury pilgrimage and he of all people calls her a “prechour”. His oath and exclamation, his starting – and that anon – reveal that he has been shaken into recognizing what the Wife of Bath has been doing. What sets off his reaction is not so much her risky theme as the word sentence that she uses just before he explodes into action. Chaucer presents him here as someone shocked into realizing that she has actually been preaching in favour of serial marriage rather than randomly arguing this. Hence, “prechour”. 37

Cf Arthur K. Moore, ‘The Pardoner’s Interruption of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue’, MLQ 20 (1949): 49-57, at 50-52; Kernan: 1-25.

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The reason why he is so late in realising what she is up to lies in the fact that she is a woman preaching, a virtually unheard-of thing in fourteenth-century Christian England. Let us be entirely clear on this point. A woman preaching represents a scandalous mockery of medieval religious practice. Ever since St Paul’s dictum “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak” the pulpit had been barred to the weaker sex, a situation that largely persists to this day in the Roman Catholic church. Antonia Frazer, in The Weaker Vessel, paints a lively picture of this antifeminist bias still ruling supreme in Britain as late as the mid-seventeenth century: “When women preach and cobblers pray/The fiends in hell make holiday”.38 Thus, the Wife’s sharp rejoinder to the Pardoner becomes more understandable when we realize that he threatens to give her game away, forcing her into quick and compelling action to cover up what the man said, which she does in the shape of her racy account of her marriages. Chaucer does not want her public exposure as a preacher at this point in her sermon. This is something that he leaves for his cleverer listeners and readers to discern. What he does is insert signs for them to show how matters stand. As Kittredge notes,39 the Friar, too, in his way points out that the Wife has made an incursion into the realm of homiletics when in his own Prologue he tells her that Ye han heer touched, also moot I thee, In scole-matere greet difficultee. Ye han seyde muche thyng right wel, I seye; But, dame, heere as we ryde by the weye, Us nedeth nat to speken but of game, And lete auctoritees, on Goddes name, To prechyng and to scoles of clergye. [Friar’s Prologue, 1271-1277]

The unctuous Friar is not going to raise a hue and cry against the Wife of Bath. Yet, for all his amusement at her sermonizing efforts, his words appear to sound a note of warning, telling her to stay away from any such thing as preaching. (Conversely, Chaucer is using the Friar – and the Pardoner, for that matter – to signal once again to the careful listeners in his audience that the Wife of Bath has been engaged on a wild preaching venture). Note also the fact that her 38 39

Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel (New York: Vintage, 1985), p 244. Kittredge, p 138.

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earlier assertion after the Pardoner’s interruption – “myn entente nys but for to pleye” – stands corrected here by the Friar who very plainly does not feel at all that she has been speaking “but of game”. The Friar’s intervention echoes the Pardoner’s words and indicates that he, too, has recognized how much of a preacher she has been, which in turn serves as a sign to the reader. The Friar is quite correct, of course, and wrong at the same time. His choice of the word “preamble” is significant. Latin preambulum, from which Chaucer seems to have derived it,40 is a perfectly good synonym for the antetheme. We find it used in this way by Humbert of Romans, who equates preambula with exordia and states with respect to these that “in these exordia or preambles, we must be brief, for if we weary our listeners, it will be detrimental to the rest of our sermon”.41 To this he adds that a preambulum ought to gain the goodwill of the audience and be “terminated by asking devoutly for the prayers of the congregation”,42 thus leaving no doubt that he is speaking of the ante-theme indeed. As we have seen, this belongs to the moment when the preacher is supposed to move from ante-theme to processus. What we deduce from this is that the Friar’s words are a joke by Chaucer on both his wordliness and the Wife’s longwindedness. The Wife’s preaching has made him prick his ears, but he has not the slightest notion where they are, which is quite appropriate for someone who is just as spiritually deaf as the Wife. His remark on her “long preamble” reveals that he is on the scent of her preaching, but he thinks that they are still in the ante-theme stage and about to start upon the processus. As ante-themes ought to be brief, he correctly uses the word “long” yet in doing so betrays his superficial capacity for listening to sermons or even his knowledge of them, for the Wife is about to launch into her major exemplum and not the divisiones. When we finally arrive at the Wife of Bath’s Tale proper, we get to deal with the major exemplum of her sermon and the rest of it. Her discourse on gentilesse constitutes her peroration, as the lesson to be drawn from the maistrie which she has been preaching, with the hag’s final transformation as the clincher of her argument. Properly speaking, the discourse should follow the exemplum’s ending and not precede it by some forty lines. Yet Chaucer chooses to weave it into the 40

Benson, p 872 note 831. Humbert of Romans, pp 156-57. 42 Humbert of Romans, p 157. 41

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exemplum itself, for evident reasons of narrative effectiveness, since it is upon understanding its application that the knight sees how he must deal with the choice which he is set by the Loathly Lady. The other homiletic rule that he breaks is the matter of the peroration’s length. It should be brief, whereas the Wife’s is lengthy. This, however, need not trouble us greatly, as Chaucer has so evidently provided an excuse for this by casting her as garrulous, as someone who “clappeth as a mille”, and arguably has other reasons for extending its length (see later). He then lets her conclude her sermon with a coda asking Jesus Christ to “sende us housbondes meeke” and all the irreverent rest of it. This conforms with the criterion set by Waleys and Basevorn that the sermon should end upon a note of prayer. Blasphemous and all, the Wife’s coda is technically precisely this, in addition to being a tripartite concluding summary of her idea of what husbands should be like. So far, so good. The only thing that appears to be shifting all the time is her theme. That we have a theme here is not a matter of dispute nor that it is used to build up an effective sermon. When we consider the matter, the problem resolves itself effortlessly. In conformity with the three divisones to come, there are three thematic aspects that she addresses. She starts with the “wo that is in mariage”, which suggests suffering on either side. Next, she switches to “tribulacion upon his flessh”, which comes down to a wife’s sexual domination (“power ... upon his propre body”, “my dettour and my thral”). She ends up, a few lines later, with her practice of “tribulacion in mariage”, with herself as the “whippe”, symbol of the repressive regimen that she brings to bear upon her husbands. When she launches into the divisiones, her confession proper, these same three variations of her theme recur. The three old husbands are subjected to the “whip”, she causes “wo in mariage” by being her fourth’s “purgatorie”, and in Jankyn’s case the unconditional surrender which is scored results in her loving “tribulacion upon his flessh”. Earlier in this chapter we saw that the “wo that is in mariage” introduction of the Wife’s theme may owe its inspiration to Book I of the Confessio Amantis, with some help from Innocent III’s De miseria. Gower’s announcement of his theme of confession “of the felicite/ Of love and ek of al the wo” is most helpful, since this not only provides a likely source for Chaucer’s theme but a Gowerian one at that which is introduced in an analogous part of the Wife’s confession.

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These two aspects of felicity and woe are also recurrent elements in the Wife’s sermon and further help to account most satisfactorily for the swings in her theme, if such help should at all be needed, as it is obvious that the swings are trinal and hence related to the required division of her theme. As the Wife’s Tale shows, its strands get ultimately united and defined as maistrie, which argues that marital bliss is a wife’s total dominance over her husband, both in and out of bed. Basically, part of the fun of the Wife of Bath preaching her theme is the sleight of hand that Chaucer allows her to perpetrate. As we have just noted, the shifting nature of her theme is basically a simple matter of perspective in terms of divisiones. The first divisio tells us that what is woe to one party, may be bliss to another: this is the Wife’s shameless exploitation of her old husbands. The second is that woe may equal bliss, and tribulation an active sex life. This is the compensation that the Wife’s offers in exchange. The ideal situation, which is the third divisio, is finally achieved during her marriage with Jankyn: the acquisition of the maistrie and the submission of the husband. Much of same conclusion is reached at the end of her tale, though there is more than just meets the unwary eye there. Thus, what her theme comes down at the end of the day is domination in marriage from her perspective and submission in marriage from the husband’s – in other words, the wielding of wifely maistrie and the husband’s acceptance of it. This is woe in marriage indeed for any unJankynlike husband now or ever but bliss and sexual plenty for the “good felawe” to come and submit to her desires. It is Innocent’s “Ioye after wo” and its reverse transmutated into “bliss after bliss” for those willing to submit to her regime. All this squares with Chaucer’s depiction of the Wife as a latter-day Venus, “al Venerien”, plus her domineering Martial aspects in her Prologue. Naturally, the shifts in emphasis in the Wife’s theme are also plainly related to the fact that her words serve a multiple purpose. Besides being part of a sermon, the Wife’s Prologue is largely also a confession with requirements of its own. Then there are the three levels on which her story as a sermon ought to be readable. No clairvoyance is needed to predict that the sense of her sermon, which comes down to the message that she wishes to convey, must run counter to what the sentence of her sermon will prove to be and that this must sometimes lead to conflicting demands upon the text – a situation quite reminiscent of the predicament in which Gower’s Genius finds himself.

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As I have pointed out, the identification and interpretation of the deeper levels is largely dependent upon signs, many, if not most, of which coincide with his use of exegetical sources, such as St Jerome, Innocent III, and – even though this is a different sort of work – the Roman de la Rose. As Graham Caie observes, Chaucer seems to use the Wife (and others) in such a way as to suggest that he expected his readers to have so easy a familiarity with biblical texts that much of his originality could arise from intertextual play. The fine shade of irony and the subtle implications which so often both create the tone of the tale and guide our evaluation of the teller are frequently appreciated only if one is aware of the source material.43

Concrete evidence of his contemporaries catching the references is found in the glosses, provided of course that they are not his own additions to the margins of his text.44 A bit of an internal puzzle is why the Wife of Bath is cast as a preacher. I am not speaking here of Gower’s challenge or Genius’ part which she appropriates, as this is quite clear, but in terms of character motivation within the compass of the Canterbury Tales. The answer lies in the sense of what the Wife of Bath is driving at and in the sentence that Chaucer has woven into it. She is reading a lesson which is directed at eligible and unwary young men and is meant to drive home the message that it is good and proper and very rewarding for young men to knuckle down to domineering wives in exchange for good sex. From here on I shall refer to this as the marriage advertisement. What better vehicle than a sermon by a preacher skilled at “wandrynge by the weye” (and a woman at that) in a day and age when such a person was a stock symbol of venality, the very sort of proverbial preaching fox that we also encounter in the shape of the Pardoner? A Sermon Within a Sermon As a final homiletic point to be noted and discussed, there is the fact that the speech on gentilesse that is pronounced by the Loathly Lady of the Wife of Bath’s Tale is a rhetorical construct that is quite sermonlike and demonstrably incorporates a number of typical sermon elements. From a purely technical perspective, it is a bit of a stumb43 44

Caie: 75-76. Caie: 76; Owen, ‘Alternative Reading’, passim.

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ling block, as it plainly interrupts the tale’s narrative flow in favour of a lengthy and none too exciting exposition on the nature of gentilesse, in much the same way that the Pardoner’s exposition of the Sins of the Tavern brings the actual tale to a halt. It is of course a cliff-hanger but its effectiveness is seriously hampered by its length. Yet once we realize how many purposes it is made to serve, we can only marvel at the cleverness with which everything is fitted together. We have already encountered it as an effective reproof of Gower’s moral philosophy. Here we are in a position to recognize how it functions narratively within the parameters of the Wife’s Tale. One typical sermon element to strike us is the recurrent use of a tripartite division. The knight has described his bride as “loothly”, “oold” and of “so lough a kynde”. The Wife evidently uses these three to spell out the knight’s perception of the hag’s ungentilesse (not to forget her own) and so has the hag rebut his objections by taking as her theme the nature of gentilesse, thereby demonstrating how spurious his claim to social gentilesse is and how positive her perceived defects actually are. There is no formal announcement of the theme, though its presence is self-evident, and the hag moves on to her dilation straight away. This takes the shape of her rejection of gentilesse as something “descended out of old richesse” (thesis) in favour of virtuous living as its source (antithesis): “Crist wole we clayme of hym oure gentilesse”, a phrase that also serves as the second required Bible text and as a proper homiletic invocation. The virtue argument covers lines 11091124 and is further illustrated by a citation from Dante in the next six lines. The impossibility of inheriting gentilesse in this sense is further sketched by the extended argument that “men may wel often fynde/A lordes sone do shame and vileynye” [lines 1131 to 1161]. The hag’s synthesis essentially repeats her antithesis in lines 1162-64: “Thy gentilesse cometh fro God allone”. In homiletic terms this is the restatement of the theme. This finishes her ante-theme and it is time for the divisiones to come in. There are three conditions (“wardeyns”) conducive to the acquisition of gentilesse. One is virtuous living and the renunciation of sin [1165-70]. Then comes poverty, which is extensively subdivided along familiar trinal lines as a) the imitation of Christ [1171-82], b) Seneca and Juvenal’s “glad povertee” [1183-94] and

The Wife of Bath’s Sermon | 339 c) Vincent of Beauvais’ rubrication of the five aspects of poverty,45 amended to include a sixth [1195-1204] for evident numerical reasons, namely the notion that “poverte a spectacle is, as thynketh me,/Thurgh which he may his verray freendes see”.

The third condition is old age, which is quickly dispensed with. Biblical authority is cited and twisted, in the selfsame way that we encounter in the first 162 lines of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, for the gentilesse involved here is all about proper respect for old age and not about any gentil virtue associated with the elderly themselves: … ye gentils of honour Seyn that men sholde an oold wight doon favour, And clepe hym fader, for youre gentilesse. [1209-11]

Of course, this is entirely insufficient, so that one more aspect is pointed out: Filthe and elde, also moot I thee, Been grete wardeyns upon chastitee. [1215-16]

Ironically, in defining the “generale signes of gentillesse”, the Parson expressly mentions “clennesse” as a requirement [ParsT, 465], which rather brings down the hag’s argument at this point. It is now time for the major exemplum to come in. At this point, Chaucer has prepared a little joke for us. In several places the hag has indicated that she is a perfectly good example of the virtues that she is discussing, which is entirely logical since it is the knight’s objections to herself that she is preaching against. In fact, at the end of each of the three divisiones there is a brief personal application. Very much worth noting is the concluding voice in which this done in each instance: therfore, therfore, now ther. And therfore, leeve housbonde, I thus conclude: Al were it that myne auncestres were rude, Yet may the hye God, and so hope I, Grante me grace to lyven vertuously. Thanne am I gentil, whan that I bigynne To lyven vertuously and weyve synne. [1171-76]

45

Robinson, p 704 note 1195.

340 | The Wife of Bath’s Sermon And therfore, sire, syn that I noght yow greve, Of my poverte namoore ye me repreve. [1205-06] Now ther ye seye that I am foul and old, Than drede you noght to been a cokewold. [1213-14]

One of the implications of the hag’s preaching is that the knight should submit, which is exactly what happens, but this is something that essentially belongs with the application, which ought to follow upon the major exemplum of the sermon that is preached to him here. These two elements, however, have been switched about. The lesson that the knight should have drawn from the major exemplum is expected to be clear to him before any exemplum makes its appearance. Another implication is that, with every major aspect of her sermonette referring to her own situation, its conclusion should likewise do so. Chaucer’s solution is brilliant. The knight gets a live demonstration (which is a good transliteration of what an exemplum stands for) in the shape of the hag’s radiant transformation. The bliss that flows from this to “hir lyves ende” rounds off this little internal sermon. On the whole, then, this little lecture on gentilesse is tightly constructed and moves along recognizably homiletic lines. Among other things, it appears to be there to serve as a playful parallel to the Pardoner’s more intricate sermon-within-a-sermon scheme. Yet playful or otherwise, the presence of a passage in the Wife of Bath’s Tale to complement our findings in the Pardoner’s case is one more confirmation of the close conceptual interrelation of these two pilgrims. Beyond the light-heartedness, however, there is ample seriousness to be noted. Our analysis has made it abundantly clear that, particularly in its solution, it belongs with the Wife of Bath’s message (the sense) rather than the exegetical countermessage (the sentence). This is easily understood when we consider how the hag’s poverty argument moves along lines that are fundamentally very similar to what the Wife propounds with respect to serial marriage and virginity, as is her argumentativeness itself. In fact, there seems to be a further little joke involved here when, after all the preaching that Chaucer caused the Wife to suffer from her various husbands, her liberated alter ego turns out to be incapable of making her point without going in for quite a little sermon of her own. Yet it also serves a deeper purpose. If we were to replace the Loathly Lady by Holy Church, which as an institution is after all God’s instrument incarnated in the foulness of the flesh, and read the

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text as non-ironical, the resulting picture would be entirely different. What was dubious and difficult to credit with respect to the hag now becomes laudable and worthy of imitation, particularly when talking of the poverty ideal that exerted such a fascination on the later Middle Ages. This switch of perspective basically constitutes the difference between the sense and the sentence of the Wife of Bath’s preaching, to which we shall return below. There remains a final aspect of the sermonette to be memorized here. This is its applicability as a complement to the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, implying that at this place and time Gower’s challenge was well answered. Its multi-level functioning should not worry us, as this is an aspect typical of late medieval homiletics. It is my feeling, expressed earlier, that the prime reason for its inclusion is precisely its referability to Gower’s challenge. What Chaucer does here is on a par with what he did in the Introduction. There he announced that the duel was on, here he gives Gower a proper dressingdown, even if, in conformity with the court game that he may have been part of or its passing or simply his own private duelling code, no names are ever mentioned and all imputations are made indirectly, through mouthpieces such as Venus on Gower’s part and the Man of Law, the Wife of Bath and her Loathly Lady on Chaucer’s. The Letter of the Wife of Bath’s Sermon The final touchstone for the Wife of Bath’s sermonizing efforts is the identifiability of letter, sense and sentence in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. The letter is no special problem. Every story has its letter, its outer cover or integumentum. What we are talking about is the surface meaning, the way in which a story comes across at face value and without any interpretative instrument. It is how many of us will have read the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. This gives us a reading whereby she argues her feminist point, not unreasonably and on a commonsense basis mainly, rebutting familiar pulpit arguments, that serial marriage is alright for a woman and that sex is natural and necessary and that marriage can be hell unless the husband is young and malleable. Her Tale repeats this in greater contrast and in more glowing terms: maistrie to the wives of this world, for this is “what wommen desiren moost”.

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This literal level of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale has proved quite successful. The historically-minded Chaucer student is aware that the latter half of the fourteenth century proved a calamity of such proportions that serial marriage must have been both commonplace and acceptable, if only for the mere procreation of the race. We equate this period with a widespread unravelling of functional society and serious social upheavals resulting from the Plague, such as the Peasants’ Revolt and the Jacquerie. “When Adam delved and Eve span,/Who was then the gentleman?” is a small step away from questioning man’s assumed superiority over woman. Since this links up well with social developments in the twentieth century, it has been easy to listen to the Wife as a prophetic voice and believe in Chaucer’s avant-la-lettre support of feminist notions. This is a common reaction among modern readers, which is not surprising since even serious Chaucer scholars have argued this view in the course of the past century.46 Needless to say, it is a fallacy but a very alluring one. The Sense of the Wife’s Sermon - the Marriage Advertisement When the Wife of Bath bursts in upon the scene with her theme of the “wo that is in mariage” anyone’s first thought is that now the veil shall be swept aside and we shall hear all. But for almost 200 lines nothing of the sort happens. Instead, the lady of the five marriages and “other compagnye in youthe” launches into a furious defence of serial marriage, only in order to conclude that In wyfhod I wol use myn instrument As frely as my Makere has it sent. If I be daungerous, God yeve me sorwe! Myn housbonde shal it have both eve and morwe, Whan that hym list come forth and paye his dette. An housbonde I wol have - I wol nat lette Which shal be bothe my dettour and my thral, And have his tribulacion withal 46

Robinson, p 7, ostensibly neutral, seems to favour the feminist side when calling the Wife of Bath’s Prologue “a program of matrimonial reform”, adding that “the author enters so dramatically into the spirit of the speaker that it might well be debated whether the Prologue is a document on the feminist or the anti-feminist side”. Among the more obvious supporters are: Whittock, pp 18-28; Corsa, pp 136-41; E.E. Slaughter, “Allas! Allas! That Ever Love was Sinne!”, MLN 49 (1934): 83-86. For other names, cf Benson, p 865. See also my Conclusion.

The Wife of Bath’s Sermon | 343 Upon his flessh, whil that I am his wyf. I have the power durynge al my lyf Upon his propre body, and noght he. [WBP, 149-159]

This is a far cry from any literal “wo that is in mariage”. It is much better suited to an ironical reading, tongue in cheek, which enables the Wife to paint an explicit picture of what joys and wonderful times she will bestow on the lucky fellow who shall have her next. It plainly echoes Gower’s complementary “felicitee”, being basically a very outspoken message whereby she broadcasts her readiness to tackle a sixth husband and liberally shower her favours upon him. Indeed, one of the striking features of the Wife of Bath’s portrait here and elsewhere in her Prologue is the great, even excessive, emphasis upon her lustful nature and conduct. The lady doth protest too much, what with her continual reference to the delectability of her quoniam, queynte, bele chose, tayl, instrument and other euphemisms.47 Besides exposing herself as a vulgarian, she exaggerates matters in her repeated insistence upon the generosity with which she bestows her favours in or out of the bedroom and in her frequent underscoring of the “appetit” that made her available “bothe eve and morwe” to men of every colour and description, not excluding husbands. Particularly revealing in this connection is the Lent passage of the Jankyn episode. As soon as one catches on that Lent implies carnivalesque festivities, the Wife’s description of her various activities acquires a bit of a hollow ring. Her lusty and exuberant behaviour turns out to be anything but exceptional, as it is typical of the spirit in which the generality of celebrants have always participated in such events. The unresolved question here is what it is that makes the Wife of Bath overemphasize the lustful aspects of her nature (or, rather, why Chaucer should wish to do so). Why all the propaganda? The answer has already been anticipated in the preceding paragraph. What she is engaged in is preaching her availability for another marriage, in luring a potential sixth husband into her web.48 This is the evident 47

Besides these, the most obvious references to the Wife’s genitalia, there appear to be many punning references as well, including “thyng”, “gentil dedes” and even “sovereignty”. For this, cf Levy: 106-22. 48 The same point is made by Burton, who ascribes the exaggeration to “the pressure on the Wife to get a husband”, which he attributes to the presumed death of Jankyn. T.L.Burton, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Fourth and Fifth Husbands and Her Ideal Sixth: The

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sense of her sermon, the message which is underscored over and over again – her marriage advertisement. And advertising is what it has all the hallmarks of: the rosy picture, the inflated attractions, the golden sunset. We may be over six centuries apart, but on this point little has changed. In terms of character credibility within the limits of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale it is this aspect which, as we have already found, most cogently argues why the Wife should have been cast as a preacher. Advertising, selling dubious wares to the unwary is the stock in trade of the wandering preacher, the Pardoner being an excellent complementary instance of this. The core of the Wife’s marriage advertisement as it presents itself in her Prologue and Tale is her theme of maistrie. But it is not now used in any general sense of wifely power wielding, of women having the “bridel” over house and husband. Instead, she preaches her theme of maistrie in a purely private sense. What she is after is her power over her husband, both within the bedroom and without. This is obvious from the tribulation which she visited upon her husbands. It is all I and my that we hear. “An housbonde I wol have, I wol nat lette [conceal]” and he shall be both “my dettour and my thral [...] whil that I am his wyf” and so on and so forth. This sentiment and similar references crop up again and again in the course of her sermon. There is one further and major ingredient that goes inseparably with the marriage advertisement. Bliss, she teaches, is domination by an experienced lady, getting on in years, over a young and willing husband. She is on the look-out for a Jankynlike fellow. Should such a person come forward, he may rest assured of a life of unabating sexual joy. It is stated outright, at the very end of her Tale when she prays Christ to send her “housbondes meeke, yonge and fressh abedde”. The fact that we find the Wife of Bath engaged in advertising her availability for marriage has led many critics to assume that she is a widow now. To do so is to miss one of the finer points of her portrait.49 What she is doing is taking out insurance in the shape of instalGrowth of a Marital Philosophy’, ChauR 13 (1978): 34-50. 49 Here sometimes the wish is the father of the argument. See, for instance, Slover, Lambdin & Lambdin: 247, who feels that the Wife has outlived her Jankyn because “she states that she is looking for a sixth”. The Wife of Bath, of course, states no such thing. In favour of a live Jankyn, D.S. Silvia, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Marital State’, NQ 212 (1967): 8-10. Against, cf Benson, p 869 note 503-14. The middle ground is taken by Biggins, who claims that the Wife’s status as wife or widow is deliberately left unclear. Dennis Biggins, “O Jankyn, Be Ye There?” in: Beryl Rowland, ed., Chaucer

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ling a prospective husband in the wings. This she calls “purveiance” and is something that she claims never to have been without: ... of my purveiance I spak to hym and seyde hym how that he, If I were wydwe, sholde wedde me. For certeynly – I sey for no bobance – Yet was I nevere withouten purveiance Of mariage, n’of othere thynges eek. I holde a mouses herte nat worth a leek That hath but oon hole for to sterte to, And if that faille, thanne is al ydo. [WBP, 566-574]

We should not be too credulous and believe her every word, yet the “purveiance” which she is practising here in her Prologue is precisely the sort of behaviour that she visited upon her earlier husbands while they were still alive. When applied to her present situation, her search for such a person indicates that there remains a live Jankyn to be cuckolded and replaced. In fact, why else should Chaucer have been so emphatic on this point, if he did not mean to imply exactly this. A good deal of Chaucerian irony and piquancy stands to be lost by reading Jankyn as dead. What it is all about is that he is still there but no longer much of a challenge. This we hear loud and clear in: Whan myn housbonde is fro the world ygon, Some Cristen man shal wedde me anon. [WBP, 47/48]

The tense is right and, though the remark may be no more than a restatement of the maxim that she has lived by in all her marriages, this leaves intact what we have just seen. In order for her “Cristen man” to step into her latest husband’s shoes straight away (anon), there is a period of wooing and waiting required before this can be effected. What the Prologue shows us is this wooing process being enacted or, rather, re-enacted in her narrative. Her words are all directed at getting someone ready to step into Jankyn’s shoes. In other words, Jankyn is not dead – she is merely anticipating, even if we do get the impression that he will not be long for this world. and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974): 249-54. On the whole, though, one gets the impression that the tendency is towards declaring Jankyn dead.

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This feeling is strengthened by the two occasions on which she wishes Jankyn a blissful afterlife. “God lete his soule nevere come in helle!” [WBP, 504] and “I prey to God, that sit in magestee,/So blesse his soule for his mercy deere” [WBP, 823-826]. This looks like reference to what the future may be hoped to bring, but it is obvious at the same time that her words imply that she has already crossed off Jankyn as a functional husband and in her thoughts associates him with the life to come. How she can be so confident of this is not made clear by Chaucer, apart from the suggestion that she wears her husbands down to the bone. But it certainly will not do, as some Chaucer scholars have done, to argue a murder scenario for both her fourth marriage and this one, in spite of all the murderousness of women that is emphasized by Jankyn’s quotation from his “book of wikked wyves”.50 As our inspection of the Wife’s sins has made abundantly clear, actual murder is precisely one of the few sins of which she is not indictable. All the same, it is not difficult to see what has seduced other Chaucer scholars into reading Jankyn as dead and gone. All the descriptive passages on the Wife and her marriages are in the past tense, as are indeed all the portraits that we encounter. “A wyf there was...” is how her portrait begins in the General Prologue and this is how things continue whenever Chaucer describes the action in the Wife’s Prologue and Tale or she reminisces about her marriages. Then, the Wife is obviously described as a flesh-and-blood succubus feeding on the life force and sexual energy of her husbands and discarding them as husks, so that the other husbands’ fate could have been visited upon Jankyn without anyone noticing it – even if the ending of that blissful union surely ought to have deserved some mention. To return to the beginning of the Wife’s sermon, we know that her theme is expressly based upon her marital experience, which as far as she is concerned suffices for her. In order to establish herself as auctoritee, however, she must first do away with any hindrance to the marriage advertisement that she wishes to preach to her companions. As her marriage advertisement comes down to an invitation for a likely fellow to step forward and be recognized as her sixth husband, it is the familiar fourteenth-century pulpit arguments against marriage, remarriage and serial marriage that she must counter and invalidate. 50

Cf Rowland: 273-82; Dolores Palomo,‘The Fate of the Wife of Bath’s “Bad” Husbands’, ChauR 9 (1975): 303-19; D.J. Wurtele, ‘The Wife of Bath and the Problem of the Fifth Husband’, ChauR 23 (1988): 117-128 (in support of Rowland).

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In recounting her selection of anti-feminist and anti-marriage argument, the Wife of Bath is depicted as well aware of a wide range of scriptural and related opinion brought to bear against marriage and particularly re-marriage. Her account of her first three marriages and the Jankyn episode of her Prologue shows where she acquired this familiarity with many of them: from the husbands with whom she had her many conflicts. Here, Chaucer allows her to use her “five housbondes scoleying” to demolish, by commonsense arguments, reductio ad absurdum, blatant pretence of incomprehension, selective quotation, distortion and pure ignorance, the chief objections that might be expected to the advocacy of serial marriage, which is irony indeed. She ranges from biblical quotation, St Jerome and other authorities to the biological function of the reproductive system. In doing so she is frequently made to turn accepted things upside down, such as combatting St Jerome’s views by citing Jovinian, thus generally managing to slant things cleverly in her favour. In this way, she establishes herself ostensibly as a preacher of no mean learning, capable of citing from an impressive range of authoritative sources, although there is little in her text that stands up to close inspection.51 For an eye-opener discussion of the Wife’s arguments, D.W. Robertson’s pages on her Prologue are among the best to be had,52 not least those dealing with the exegetical aspect of her preaching. Our interest here lies chiefly in the composition of the Wife’s sermon. Thus, what ought to strike us is that almost immediately she cites John 4, which is no surprise since it is the single most damning and authoritative text against women who have been married five times and continue to seek new relationships. In point of fact, this text is the obvious reason why Chaucer depicts the Wife of Bath as one who has married five times. It is a major sign: Herkne eek, lo, with a sharp word for the nones, Biside a welle, Jhesus, God and man, Spak in repreeve of the Samaritan: ‘Thou hast yhad fyve housbondes,’ quod he, ‘And that ilke man that now hath thee Is noght thyn housbonde,’ thus seyde he certeyn. 51

Cf David, p 138. He remarks that “it is a fact that practically every reference the Wife makes to Holy Writ twists around its meaning and violates if not the letter then the spirit of the law [of God]”. 52 Robertson, pp 317-30.

348 | The Wife of Bath’s Sermon What that he mente therby, I kan nat seyn; But that I axe, why that the fifthe man Was noon housbonde to the Samaritan? How manye myghte she have in mariage? Yet herde I nevere telle in myn age Upon this nombre diffinicioun. [WBP, 14-25]53

Leaving aside the theological aspects, which belong with the sentence, the notable thing about the way the Wife deals with this text is that she distorts Christ’s words. His words are plain: the Samaritan has had five marriages and is now living with a sixth man, to whom she is not married. The Wife, however, twists the remark’s verbal tense – “hast yhad” – to apply to the fifth husband, thereby effectively obscuring the sense of Christ’s words. The reason why she should do so is not difficult to see. It is because she is on the look-out for a potential sixth husband that she cannot afford such a damning biblical passage to be used against her. Obviously, too, this supports my argument that Jankyn is still alive, since otherwise Chaucer need not have let her go to all this trouble. Continuing her argument, she goes on to cite Solomon as an instance of multiple marriage. This enables her to underline her sexuality afresh: Lo, heere the wise kyng, daun Salomon; I trowe he hadde wyves mo than oon. As wolde God it leveful were unto me To be refesshed half so ofte as he! [WBP, 35-38]

Later, when concluding her argument against virginity, she does so again: I wol bestowe the flour of al myn age In the actes and in fruyt of mariage. [WBP, 113-14]

And she rounds off matters with the words (“In wyfhood I wol use myn instrument”, etc.) that we encountered above and have already identified as her outspoken marriage advertisement, lacking only the age qualification that is an integral part of the whole package deal.

53

Cf Robertson, pp 320-22.

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Now the wily Pardoner intervenes, not only to expose her as a preacher of sermons but to pronounce judgement on her theme as well. In doing so, he plainly provides another sign: Ye been a noble prechour in this cas. I was about to wedde a wyf; allas! What sholde I bye it on my flessh so deere? Yet hadde I levere wedde no wyf to-yeere! [WBP, 165-168]

What the Pardoner, “expert in al [his] age” on the subject of good salesmanship, has latched on to is the marriage advertisement. The Wife preaches in order to get herself a new husband, is what his words come down to. Why else should he make his facetious remarks about wedding plans and the high toll that she exacts? His “yet hadde I levere wedde no wyf to-yeere” carries a double sting. Besides declining the honour of being her “dettour and thral”, an invitation which is not directed at him, one feels, but wide enough for him to slip some venom in, his words suggest the sort of phrase that one uses to keep away peddlers of unwanted commodities – something in which he is well-schooled since he is precisely such a person. This sentiment is exacty what we find repeated some twenty lines onward when he requests her to Telle forth youre tale, spareth for no man, And teche us yonge men of youre praktike. [WBP, 186-187]

His words provoke the Wife into a waspish reply warning the likes of him to stay at a safe distance. This shows, among other things, that she is meant to be read as being disconcerted by his clever insights. For all her preaching, the last thing that she wishes is to be exposed on either the point of preaching or what it is that she is preaching. As we have seen, women preachers are anathema in fourteenth-century thought and she is certainly not out to be marked as a scoffer or a heretic at this point. With Chaucer clearly intending to let her get away with her enterprise, this “geldyng or a mare” cannot be allowed to spoil matters at this point Apart from this, note how the Pardoner’s choice of words – “us yonge men” – shows how well he has been listening. She then launches into her marital confession, most of which delineates the types of marriage that she is not looking for. She details

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her first three marriages, to jealous old men that she did not love and who “unnethe myghte [...] the statut holde in which that they were bounden”. Even here, in the midst of revealing how shrewishly she dealt with them, there is repeated mention of her bedroom activities: As help me God, I laughe whan I thynke How pitously a-nyght I made hem swynke! [WBP, 201-202] For, certeyn, olde dotard, by youre leve Ye shul have queynte right ynogh at eve. He is to greet a nygard that wolde werne A man to lighte a candle at his lanterne; He shal have never the lasse light, pardee. Have thou ynogh, thee thar nat pleyne thee. [WBP, 331-336]

The maistrie theme is repeated, too, with all the sexual lures, though not yet linked up with the young-old gender switch that comes later. Give me the bridle, she says, and I shall be jolly in bed: [...] Than wolde I seye, “Goode lief, taak keep How mekely looketh Wilkyn, oure sheep! Com neer, my spouse, lat me ba thy cheke! Ye sholde been al pacient and meke, And han a sweete spiced conscience, Sith ye so preche of Jobes pacience. Suffreth alwey, syn ye so wel kan preche; And but ye do, certein we shal yow teche That it is fair to have a wyf in pees. Oon of us two moste bowen, doutelees, And sith a man is moore resonable Than womman is, ye moste been suffrable. What eyleth yow to grucche thus and grone? Is it for ye wolde have my queynte allone? Wy, taak it al! Lo, have it every deel! Peter! I shrewe yow, but ye love it weel; For if I wolde selle my bele chose, I koude walke as fressh as is a rose; But I wol kepe it for youre owene tooth. Ye be to blame, by God! I sey yow sooth”. [WBP, 431-450]

Old and stingy, jealous and suspicious, the three first husbands figure here as an illustration of the type of husband that she is not interested in. This is not because they will not knuckle under to her demands for the “bridel” or give her the maistrie, for this is the con-

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dition that she reduces all of them to in the end. It is because physically they are all that she is not looking for. She may have reduced them to being meek but “yonge and fressh abedde” they can never be. Much the same function is accorded to her fourth husband, the “revelour”, one of the two “badde” ones, bad standing for unwilling to give in to her. He had a “paramour” and this, too, is entirely against the grain of the Wife’s maistrie. This husband refuses to be a thrall, and as a “dettour” he is sadly lacking, since her shares his favours with another instead of submitting to her demand of full submission. Yet in spite of this and for all the brevity of her tale of her fourth marriage (fewer than 50 lines, as compared to the 250-odd on her old husbands and the 325 on Jankyn, though he crops up unexpectedly at various moments in her Prologue) there is the suggestion of a love match here, turned sour and still rankling.54 It is here that we come across her wild old times speech, drawing heavily on the Roman de la Rose. This was really living and it still warms the cockles of her heart when she thinks back on those days. I was yong and ful of ragerye, Stibourn and strong, and joly as a pye. How koude I daunce to an harpe smale, And synge, ywis, as any nyghtyngale, Whan I had dronke a draughte of sweete wyn! [...] And after wyn on Venus moste I thynke, For al so siker as cold engendreth hayl, A likerous mouth moste han a likerous tayl. In wommen vinolent is no defence This knowen lecchours by experience. [WBP, 455-459, 463-468]

Her jolliness and her sexual inclinations in particular are a restatement of this aspect of her marriage advertisement, as is her reiterated emphasis on her love of wine in combination with her sexual activities. Such a woman she was, and still is – so her message goes. Now, sire, now wol I telle forth my tale. As evere moote I drynken wyn or ale... [WBP, 193-194] 54 For a wildly improbable interpretation of the Wife of Bath’s relation with her fourth husband, cf Gloria K. Shapiro, ‘Dame Alice as Deceptive Narrator’, ChauR 6 (1971): 130-41. The Wife is “both profoundly and superficially religious” and “her few remarks concerning her fourth husband demonstrate that she deliberately avoids speaking about her deep feelings” [summary on unnumbered initial page in ChauR 6].

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Continuing in the same vein, she actually goes so far as to admit to being engaged in a marriage advertisement. She is selling (note the remarkable reference) and claims that she will be a jolly buy! … Age, allas, that al wole envenyme, Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith. Lat go. Farewel! The devel go therwith! The flour is goon; ther is namoore to telle; The bren, as I best kan, now moste I selle; But yet to be right myrie wol I fonde. [WBP, 474-479]

The Jankyn episode of the Wife’s confession restates the marriage advertisement and the philosophy behind it, her “purveiance of mariage”: I seye that in the feeldes walked we, Till trewely we hadde swich daliance, This clerk and I, that of my purveiance I spak to hym and seyde hym how that he, If I were wydwe, sholde wedde me. [WBP, 564-568]

And, as if she has not been plain enough, she immediately repeats this sentiment, this time as a general rule of hers: Yet was I nevere withouten purveiance Of mariage, n’of othere thynges eek. I holde a mouses herte nat worth a leek That hath but oon hole for to sterte to, And if that faille, thanne is al ydo. [WBP, 570-574]

Now whereas the Wife of Bath’s first four husbands are disqualified on account of their age and inadequacy (the old ones) and adultery (the reveller), all incompatible with her notion of maistrie, the resolved Jankyn situation is a graphic illustration of the marital bliss that lies in store for the good-looking young husband who allows himself to be guided by her. Thus, after her extensive exposition of the ways in which Jankyn strove to tame her and cause her to mend her ways and their climactic quarrel when she tears a leaf, later amended to as many as three leaves, out of his “book of wikked wyves” and he strikes her down so forcefully that she is left deaf in one ear, there is a happy ending. Jankyn surrenders and she gets the maistrie:

The Wife of Bath’s Sermon | 353 Atte laste, with muchel care and wo, We fille acorded by us selven two. He yaf me al the bridel in myn hond, To han the governance of hous and lond, And of his tonge, and of his hond also; And made hym brenne his book anon right tho. And whan that I hadde geten unto me, By maistrie, al the soveraynetee, And that he seyde, ‘Myn owene trewe wyf, Do as thee lust the terme of al thy lyf; Keep thyn honour, and keep eek myn estaat’ After that day we hadden never debaat. God helpe me so, I was to hym as kynde As any wyf from Denmark unto Ynde, And also trewe, and so was he to me. 55 [WBP, 811-825]

This, of course, is the marriage advertisement again, the denouement serving as both an object lesson and an exposition of the happiness that can be attained in her arms. It is the conclusion of her sermon’s dilation, to be repeated again in the exemplum to come. Nor has the attendant emphasis on the Wife’s sensual nature gone missing in this part of her confession. She marries Jankyn, at the age of twenty, when she is forty, But yet I hadde alwey a coltes tooth. Gat-tothed I was, and that bicam me weel; I hadde the prente of seinte Venus seel. As help me God, I was a lusty oon, And faire, and riche, and yong, and wel bigon; And trewely, as myn housbondes tolde me, I hadde the beste quoniam mighte be. [WBP, 602-608]

This excellent bit of advertising is quickly continued in the same vein: For certes, I am al Venerien In feelynge, and myn herte is Marcien. Venus me yaf my lust, my likerousnesse, 55

I believe that I have seen it pointed out that in the last three lines the Wife actually nullifies her claim to having kept her marital faith. Clearly she is presented here as meaning to say that she was kind and faithful ever after. But in picking this comparison Chaucer effectively makes her say that she conducted herself like any other married woman anywhere in the world, which in the light of the anti-feminist content of the entire Prologue comes down to the author implying that she is dissembling and persisting in her wayward conduct.

354 | The Wife of Bath’s Sermon And Mars yaf me my sturdy hardynesse; Myn ascendant was Taur, and Mars therinne. Allas, allas! that evere love was synne! I folwed ay myn inclinacioun By vertu of my constellacioun; That made me I koude noght withdrawe My chambre of Venus from a good felawe. [WBP, 609-618]

When she concludes this part of her sermon, she is immediately commented upon by the Friar, whose remarks lead to a verbal skirmish with the Summoner which ought to make us sit up and listen. This is one of the major rogues, second to only his mate the Pardoner, “his freend and his compeer”. They have apparently decided, between the two of them, that the Wife of Bath is attempting to produce a sermon and are eager to hear her round this off. She is their “disport”. They do not want any friar to spoil their fun at this moment. Something like this seems to be what Chaucer is driving at when he makes the Summoner confuse the issue. The dangerous, telltale word preamble, which, as we know, suggests preaching, is swiftly disposed of by a lovely bit of obfuscation on Chaucer’s part. There is nothing to be gained by undeceiving the pilgrims (and his audience) yet, so their attention is drawn away from the danger point and swiftly led to horses and horse locomotion: What spekestow of preambulacioun? What! amble, or trotte, or pees [pace], or go sit down! Thou lettest [spoil] our disport in this manere. [WBP, 837-839]

In true Chaucerian fashion the lex talionis is now applied. An eye for an eye, tit for tat, retaliation: we have come across it again and again throughout these chapters: the “quytynge”. The Friar and the Summoner get into a retaliatory quarrel. But, naturally, the Wife also feels the need to get even with her impertinent interrupter. So, no sooner has she come to her tale – the exemplum – than she lashes out at holy friars and their sort whom she paints as the despoilers of the faerie paradise that existed in the golden days of King Arthur. The setting may be Arthurian, yet the tale itself does not belong to the Arthurian canon. As we have seen, the Arthurian link is flimsy and plainly superimposed upon the plot, solely depending on Arthur being briefly referred to in four places. It is there because it is associated with courtly love and this is a subject that the Wife of Bath can

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use very well in her argument. As she sees it, courtly love stands for male service and submission to female rule. No in-depth analysis is needed here, for this is a recurrent notion in her Tale. Of course, Chaucer is parodying amour courtois here, at the implicit expense of Gower, but we realise that this is something that pervades his entire portrait of the Wife of Bath on this level. At the end of the day, her notion of maistrie is simply a bourgeois version of Frauendienst – the lady’s service so typical of courtly love – but perverted into something to be had on demand rather than freely given. A further point to be noted here is that, at least on this level of the Tale, all the manifestations of womanhood that we come across are at the same time manifestations of the Wife herself. Whether maid, wife or widow attending Arthur’s Queen, whether elf-queen, Midas’ wife, maiden raped, interviewee during the knight’s quest, repulsive hag or transformed bride: all are personae of the Wife of Bath in all her self-proclaimed knowledge of how the world turns. The tale proper opens with the arrival of the protagonist. He is a bachelor, which stands for a young knight here, since he is also referred to as “knyght”.56 He is also nameless and this, too, is entirely logical: a marriage advertisement directed at large, even though the Wife may have fixed up-on a suitable candidate, cannot afford to suggest by the use of a specific name that the position has already been filled. The knight’s status is also worth noting. A full-fledged knight is not a “bachelor”. It is a sign used to indicate that he is still to be initiated into the finesses of chivalry and a lady’s service. Chaucer’s use of the word carries a number of implications: he must be unmarried (one of the Chaucerian senses of “bachelor”), young, and “servysable” (the knightly aspect of bachelorhood), a condition here including serviceability on a wifely maistrie basis that the marriage advertisement calls for – willingness to be initated into the rites of wedded bliss and to be “refresshed” ever after. It has been remarked that the young knight is the Wife of Bath’s Lohengrin, her vision of masculine perfection.57 Not so – he is her 56 F.G. Townsend, ‘Chaucer’s Nameless Knight’, MLR 49: 1-4, at 3; E. Brugger, ‘“Der schöne Feigling” in den arthurischen Literatur’, Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie 61 (1941); 1-44 57 For the opposite view cf Malone (481-91), who perceives the rape as “a mere storytelling device, serving to get the hero into trouble”. More dubious is Gerould’s view (pp 75-76) that the rape is here solely to provide “irony in having the knight’s act of

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vision of masculine perfectability and there is a world of difference between these two perceptions. In the Wife’s philosophy a man is a fallen brute until he is raised by her to attain his destiny. Thus, her bachelor comes riding “fro river” and “allone as he was born”. Though “river” here primarily means “hawking ground”,58 both elements, absent in Gower, are easily referred to the Book of Genesis and its paradise where there are as many as four rivers and Adam, as God’s first human creation, is similarly alone as he was born and his descendant Henoch is a mighty hunter in the eyes of the Lord. In this role as the Wife’s Adam the bachelor knight is directly headed for a fall. He sees a country maid and “maugree her heed” takes her “by verray force”.This is of course also what the hawking aspect means here: the knight’s hunting is a sexual thing and the rape its natural outcome.59 This is Original Sin as the Wife of Bath sees it, a male variation of the primordial temptation of Eve. It is Man who is the sinner and victimizes Woman, rather than otherwise. Rape is the absolute negation of everything that maistrie as wielded by a wife stands for. It is done without the woman’s consent, it subjects her to male domination and takes place without the sanction of marriage. It is anathema.60 What the knight does is the commission of male maistrie. Well worth noting here is the Wife’s choice of words in describing the rape. They come straight from the Parson’s secunda pars Penitencie and deal with the confessor’s duty of distinguishing the circumstances under which a sin has been committed, one of them being “if the womman, maugree hir hed, hath been afforced, or noon” [974]. Elsewhere he describes this as casting “a mayden out of the hyeste degree that is in this present lif” [868]. This is evidently one of Chaucer’s little signs and what it indicates is an overlapping of sense and sentence. This is Deadly Sin in everyone’s book.61 In addition, unbridled lust” lead to the dilemma of the hag’s riddle: “The question of women’s sovereignty has little relevance to the act [of rape]”. This seems to me a serious misreading of what the Wife’s argument is all about. 58 Robinson, p 703 note 884. 59 Robertson, ‘Midas’: 3. 60 Benson, p 873 note 1028; Confessio Amantis, Book VIII, lines 2667ff. 61 Rather shockingly, it turns out that in the Parson’s book the innocent victim has become a sinner by association. She is first to be subjected to an interrogation whereby she is essentially perceived as the instigator: “This shal she telle: for coveitise, or for poverte, and if it was hire procurynge, or noon”. If she is lucky, “she may have mercy, this woot I wel, if she do penitence; but nevere shal it be that she nas corrupt” [872].

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there is an interesting connection between the paradisiacal setting and the denouement of the Tale. As the Merchant’s Januarie points out, in evident reference to Canticles, a wife is “paradys terrestre”. This is the very point that the Wife of Bath makes at the end of her Tale, when the knight and the transformed hag are united in “parfit joye” that lasts “unto hir lyves ende”. Rape, on the other hand, is the despoiling of paradise and to be equated with death and damnation. Universal clamour results and the knight is “dampned [...] for to be deed”, which stands to reason, as he has just committed what in the Wife’s philosophy comes down to mortal sin. He is constrained to appear before Arthur’s court and be sentenced. Yet because he is evidently an attractive young brute brimful of “fresshness”, the Wife’s term for feistiness, the Queen and her ladies beg for grace and Arthur, as an evident initiate wisely recognizing what honour is due to his Queen, leaves the decision to her, “al at hir wille/To chese wheither she wolde hym save of spille”. Arthur is a courtly servant here, whose gracious bowing-out enables the Queen and her ladies to assemble a court of love, reminiscent both of those of Elinor of Aquitaine and Marie of Champagne and the conclusion of the Confessio Amantis as well. Arthur’s example seems to me Chaucer’s translation of the position that his audience was meant to take on this issue, at least within the courtly parameters of the tale. The Queen grants the knight his life “... if thou kanst tellen me What thyng it is that wommen moost desiren. Be war, and keep thy nekke-boon from iren! And if thou kanst nat tellen it anon, Yet wol I yeve thee leve for to gon A twelf-month and a day, to seche and leere An answer suffisant in this mateere”. [WBT, 904-910]

Needless to say, her part as the ultimate judge of the knight’s fate is in full accord with the Wife of Bath’s teachings. On his quest the knight encounters a wide range of solutions to this question, no two women agreeing on a single answer. “The many answers [he] gets in the course of his twelve-month travels bear the amused corroboration of Alisoun’s experience and rationale”.62 Or, 62

Helen Storm Corsa, Chaucer, Poet of Mirth and Morality (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 1964), p 145. Cf also Mann.

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put differently, the various possible solutions that the Wife sums up are tongue-in-cheek reflections of her own pet preferences, all of which we have come across in the course of her Prologue as reproaches by her husbands: Somme seyde wommen loven best richesse, Somme seyde honour, somme seyde jolynesse, Somme riche array, somme seyden lust abedde, And oftetyme to be wydwe and wedde. [WBT, 925-928]

Almost unnoticed, the marriage advertisement has slipped in again. The aware listener is not supposed to forget what the Wife is preaching for; the unaware ones are once again subtly pointed into the right direction, repetition being a basic element of good advertising. The answers which the knight receives are almost all facets of the one great truth that shall be revealed to him and the Wife’s listeners in due time. The one exception is the notion that women wish to be regarded as steady and close-lipped, in illustration of which she tells the tale of Midas and his ears. Within its context, this digression is best interpreted as an orator’s device directed at building up the audience’s impatience to hear the tale’s continuation. From the Wife’s point of view it enables her to do exactly this and re-emphasize at the same time her wide “learning”, though here as elsewhere her garbling of the matter at hand exposes her actual want of this. Of course, this is Chaucer laughing at her, casting his most garrulous pilgrim in the part of a woman preacher expanding on the subject of women’s loquacity. When the knight is close to failing his quest, there is the Loathly Lady – a “wyf/A fouler wight ther may no man devyse” – to teach the knight that “thise olde folk kan muchel thyng”. We meet her “under a forest syde” to which he is attracted by “a daunce […]/Of ladyes foure and twenty, and yet mo”. These immediately call to mind the dancing ladies whom we find in Chaucer’s introductory love vision in the Legend of Good Women and in Gower’s Confessio. The hag’s loathsomeness is a matter for the next level of her tale, but it is worth noting here that the association with the Legend indicates that she represents the ephemeral nature of Venus, as something and someone tied to the transient flesh – in much the same way that the Wife of Bath functions. And so, once again, we find ourselves in the middle of the marriage advertisement. We recognize this “olde wyf” to be none

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other than the Wife of Bath, drawn in the stark outline of a Before/ After commercial, a sales technique stemming from times immemorial. And, of course, since it is her own private advertisement, the hag as her alter ego possesses the unfailing key to the riddle that the knight seeks to unravel. Man is but a poor creature without the help of a woman like her. Thus the knight is propelled towards what we might properly call his initiation. Knowing the answer, which the hag whispers into his ear, on a par with the Wife of Bath who rather more clamorously has been doing the same thing with respect to the pilgrims, he must now move from knowledge to understanding and thence to experience, which, in the Wife’s terms, is identical to wisdom. The assembled court, with the Queen as high judge and her ladies in their triple Wife-of-Bathean manifestion as mayde, wyf and wydwe, all recognize the correctness of the knight’s answer: maistrie is what women desire most: Wommen desiren to have sovereynetee As wel over hir housbond as hir love, And as for to been in maistrie hym above. [WBT, 1038-1040]

To the knight’s chagrin, the consequence is marriage to the loathly lady. Of course, this is the natural outcome of the riddle and, in the immediate background, the marriage advertisement itself. Maistrie is something that the Wife argues for within the bounds of marriage. Maistrie can only be known by undergoing it. Since this spells marriage in the Wife’s philosophy, it is marriage for the nameless knight of her Tale and, one feels, for the unidentified pilgrim at whom all her preaching must be directed. The knight’s predicament is terrible. The bride is “foul, and oold, and poore” and, once they are in the bridal chamber, the horrid “olde wyf lay smylynge everemo”, claiming to be his “owene love” and promising to amend whatever he feels to be wrong. But his heart is filled with despair, for the woman beside him is the abhorrent image of the Wife of Bath. Even her speech is that of the Wife, some of whose favourite expletives move into ken again: “benedicitee” and “God it woot” [1087, 1150]. “Amended?” quod this knyght, “allas, nay, nay! It wol nat been amended nevere mo. Thou art so loothly, and so oold also,

360 | The Wife of Bath’s Sermon And therto comen of so lough a kynde, That litel wonder is thogh I walwe and wynde.” [WBT, 1098-1102]

Picking up the argument, the hag embarks upon a speech on gentilesse, thereby interrupting the narrative flow once again. Earlier in this chapter this was identified as her peroration, while we noted that on a different level it also functioned as a miniature sermon. The discussion is manifestly about class differences and class boundary crossing.63 As the Wife’s mouthpiece the hag argues that gentilesse neither depends on riches or lineage, but comes from God alone and stands for virtuous living: … May the hye God, and so hope I, Grante me grace to lyven vertuously. Thanne am I gentil, whan that I bigynne To lyven vertuously and weyve synne. [WBT, 1173-1176]

This lovely piece of hypocrisy – for there is no way in which the Wife of Bath, for whom she speaks, will ever be brought to lead such a life – is compounded by what she has to say on the subject of poverty, for this turns out to be a panegyric rather than the predictable diatribe. Now how are we to account for this? We are dealing, here and now, with the marriage advertisement. In such a context the Wife’s words are easily understood. Neither family wealth nor ancient lineage should be any objection to marriage to someone from a lower social stratum as long as she is a decent person. Not even age or ugliness or lack of possessions should be an encumbrance. The argument is entirely reasonable within the bounds of her exemplum but also applies, obviously, to her own situation. It is one more – this time virtuously packaged – piece of encouragement, saying “Bite! Forget all about class and wealth and outward appearances, for the taste of this apple shall be wonderful!” As we have seen earlier, the great length at which she dwells on the subject of poverty – 63

Cf Dorothy Colmer, ‘Character and Class in the Wife of Bath’s Tale’, JEGP 72 (1974): 329-39. Colmer’s argument that the Wife’s discussion of gentilesse stems from her social background links up well with the notion of her social climbing. However, I am inclined to assess the middle-class status which she is assigned here as something attained after great effort, as she consistency exposes herself as a vulgarian without any claim to breeding or social graces. It should further be noted that her fight for the maistrie is essentially one more form that her social climbing takes.

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some 30 lines – serves as a well-argued foundation for the claim to a natural gentilesse, while also serving to prepare for a more spiritual reading on the Tale’s next level. Or is Chaucer also implying that the hag’s defence of poverty carries a message about the Wife of Bath’s financial status? From the Wife’s account of her fifth marriage we have the impression that she was quite well-off when she married Jankyn and “to hym yaf …al the lond and fee/ That evere was me yeven therbifoore” [WBP, 630-31]. On the other hand, her riding outfit, as described in the General Prologue, seems outdated by several decades, possibly indicating far less affluence than she wishes to suggest.64 This is repeated, rather curiously, when, in reference to the fun that she and Jankyn had in Lent when her husband was in London, she remarks upon the clothes which she wore then and, somehow, still seems to be wearing now: [I] wered upon my gaye scarlet gytes. Thise wormes, ne thise motthes, ne thise mytes, Upon my peril, frete hem never a deel; And wostow why? For they were used weel. [WBP, 559-62]

The obvious reaction would be to interpret this as a nonchalant remark by a rich dresser (“These old rags…”), but the added “Don’t worry, for they were used well” imply a different story. Perhaps Chaucer was thinking here of La Veille, upon whom the Wife and her marriages are so plainly based. The Wife’s “wild old times” speech is directly based on this lady’s reminiscences of how she married her old husbands for money, only in order to spend it all with her reveller husband.65 It should be added that the Wife of Bath is evidently not a truthful person, so that it may well be that for a brief moment here Chaucer makes her drop the mask of middle-class prosperity that he has allowed her to nurse so carefully. The knight’s rather unexpected willingness to accede to all the hag’s demands, in each and every respect, carries the sardonic implication that he is at least partially motivated to do so in order to get away from her interminable lesson. Anything is better than this. The implicit bit of humour here is that her long-winded discourse on 64

Robinson, p 663. Roman de la Rose, 13452-63, 12924-25, 12932ff ; Robinson, p 700 notes 467-68 and 469-73). 65

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gentilesse and poverty is a direct echo of Jankyn’s interminable sessions and his “Book of Wikked Wyves”. There is some lovely irony in this sketch of a Jankyn-seasoned Wife verbally battered to distraction proclaiming Jankyn’s own arguments against status climbing, particularly as they are used in a context whereby they challenge upper-class superiority and a knight is brought to heel by a someone who can only be taken to belong to the underclass. Irony is perhaps too weak a word, when we consider how all Jankyn’s preaching against the faithlessness of women, as rehearsed by the Wife, is here made to serve the very purpose of cuckolding him . The practical object of the entire exercise, or so we had best assume, was for Chaucer to make the gentilesse argument applicable on several levels. It constitutes a major exegetical argument against the Wife’s theme of maistrie. This, as we shall see when discussing the sentence of her sermon, ultimately stands for thraldom, the subjection of oneself and others to the foulness of sin. Gentilesse, on the other hand, is our God-given natural capacity for virtue. What the hag says sounds all very acceptable, yet there is every reason to believe that we are her dupes. The situation is best summed up by what Bernard Levy says on this point, who lets himself be similarly duped. “The force of the Hag’s argument is inescapable, for logic, authority, and experience all prove that she is truly gentil and that the knight is not”.66 Now this is entirely correct from her point of view and in terms of her marriage advertisement. Yet, to take a sneak preview of things to come on the final level of her Tale, she has in point of fact demonstrated nothing of the kind. She has merely argued that gentilesse is not an aristocratic thing but a matter of God-given virtue and that poverty and old age are potent guarantees for virtuous living. True as this may be, she has neither shown herself to be virtuous by birth or exemplary old age nor through any demonstrably virtuous life-style. In fact, being an implicit persona of Venus, it is obvious that she is not “gentil” in this sense of the word. This accords well with Chaucer’s ambiguous addition when he makes the hag say: 66

Cf Bernard S. Levy, ‘Gentilesse in Chaucer’s Clerk’s and Merchant’s Tales’, ChauR 11 (1977): 306-18. He points out that the Wife defines gentilesse in terms of “manners, virtue and sexual indulgence”. Donald Baker, 631-40, regards her speech on gentilesse as “an argument in a narrower scheme of wife-liberation”. This can only hold good for the sexual side of things, for it is clear that whatever the Wife is after it is not liberation.

The Wife of Bath’s Sermon | 363 Thanne am I gentil, whan that I bigynne To lyven vertuously and weyve synne. [WBT, 1175-76]

Contrary to Levy’s interpretation this is not the innocent conclusion of her argument (innocence and the Wife of Bath being mutually exclusive concepts, anyway, and the hag’s argument still in medias res). Rather, it is a sign pointing ahead to what happens a few minutes later when, in a “bath of blisse” the Loathly Lady, transformed, enters upon a life wherein she obeys her husband “in every thyng/That myghte doon hym plesaunce or likyng” and this “unto hir lyves ende”. A glance at the Parson’s Tale on the subject of bliss suffices to show that the picture sketched here is a voluptuary’s dream scenario that clashes with everything said there. Thus there is no chance that she is at all gentil, when immediately upon uttering these words, she plunges into a life that is neither virtuous nor conducive to waiving sin.67 The entire situation here is reminiscent of Gower. Not only is the Loathly Lady easily unriddled as Venus in disguise and does she capably take upon herself Genius’ role of confessor and explicator, but her argument is similarly suggestive of his performance. While pronouncing a sentence that is impeccable from a good Christian point of view, her tale is at the same time used to propound its very opposite, namely Venus’ amoral law of kinde which comes down to fornication for the sake of fornication. There may be a special barb involved here to prick Gower, when with sublime irony the hag is made to use reason – Gower’s antithesis to kinde – to prop up her argument. Meanwhile, we have come to the climax of the Wife of Bath’s Tale. The knight is set a Theophrastian choice by the hag: “Chese now,” quod she,”oon of thise thynges tweye: To han me foul and old til that I deye, And be to yow a trewe, humble wyf, And nevere yow diplese in al myn lyf, 67

Robert P. Miller, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale and Medieval Exempla’, ELH 32 (1965): 442-56. Levy: 106-22. Levy’s interesting article starts by suggesting that the gentilesse speech impels the knight to a recognition of virtue, thus opening his eyes to the true fairness hidden behind the hag’s forbidding exterior, which mirrors the remedial element that I discern in my discussion of the sentence of her Tale. In the third part of his article he turns about and argues that what the Wife is really after is sexual gratification, which is essentially the point that I make with respect to the sense. His emendation of “what thyng it is that wommen desiren moost” is entertainingly phallic and rings true but is ultimately not the only thing that the Wife is after.

364 | The Wife of Bath’s Sermon Or elles ye wol han me yong and fair, And take youre aventure of the repair That shal be to youre hous by cause of me, Or in som oother place, may wel be”. [WBT, 1219-1226] 68

Here the marriage advertisement rears its head again. It is the Before and After choice once more, drawn in sharp contrast – between the Wife of Bath as the person that she has been transformed into by age and five marriages and the way she was when she was when young, fair and none too particular. After the object lessons of her five husbands it is easy to see which of the alternatives is the one the knight should select. Doubtless the choice would have made Chaucer’s public sit up and prick their ears as the traditional one is tellingly different. But there is an additional surprise in store for the Wife’s audience (and for us, as well), for the hectored knight sensibly declines to make a choice at all. For a brief moment we forgot about the central core of the marriage advertisement – maistrie. Choosing implies the exercise of free will instead of the submission that is called for. The knight shows himself to be enlightened, stating that henceforth her desire shall be his guide: “My lady and my love, and wyf so deere, I put me in youre wise governance; Cheseth youreself which may be moost plesance And moost honour to yow and me also. I do no fors the wheither of the two; For as yow liketh, it suffiseth me”. [WBT, 1230-1235]

Not surprisingly, it is almost as if we hear Jankyn speaking: “... Myn owene trewe wyf, Do as thee lust the terme of al thy lyf; Keep thyn honour, and keep eek myn estaat”. [WBP, 819-821]

The Jankyn echo is not accidental, of course. Everything that the Wife of Bath preaches has been directed at a reliving, a re-enactment of that glorious time when she obtained the marriage bridle. If anything, the Jankyn situation has whetted her appetite.69 68 Cf Andrew Galloway, ‘Marriage Sermons, Polemical Sermons, and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue: A Generic Excursus, SAC 14 (1992): 3-30, at 14, 16. 69 The re-enactment idea is also found in Carole Koepke Brown, though she applies it

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The knight’s gentil surrender (note, for instance, how it is no longer as thou that he addresses her) is the keynote here. It is the conditio sine qua non for the happy ending that is to follow for him, just as it is for the pilgrim or pilgrims at whom her advertisement is targeted. What has happened is that the knight has humbly accepted his wife’s maistrie, just as the Wife’s sixth husband-to-be will have to. The hag immediately underscores the import of her husband’s words: “Thanne have I gete of yow maistrie,” quod she, “Syn I may chese and governe as me lest?” “Ye, certes, wyf,” quod he, “I holde it best.” [WBT, 1236-1238]

The result is magical. She promises him the best of two worlds: ... I wol be to yow bothe This is to seyn, ye, bothe fair and good. I prey to God that I moote sterven wood, But I to yow be also good and trewe, As evere was wyf, syn that the world was newe”. [WBT, 1240-1244]

And when at her bidding the knight casts up the curtain he sees That she so fair was, and so yong therto, For joye he hente hire in his armes two. His herte bathed in a bath of blisse. A thousand tyme a-rewe he gan hire kisse, And she obeyed hym in every thyng That myghte doon hym plesance or likyng. [WBT, 1251-1256]

This is the culmination of the Wife of Bath’s preaching and advertising. What she is saying in effect is that the one who marries differently and to other passages in the Tale. ‘Episodic Patterns and the Perpetrator: the Structure and Meaning of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale’, ChauR 31 (1996): 1835. Kemp Malone claims that “we should be going sadly astray if we took the heroine for the Wife of Bath in disguise, or even for her mouthpiece” (‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’: 487). It seems to me that he is the one who is sadly astray, both where the sentence and the sense are concerned. Someone else who goes somewhat astray is Rose A. Zimbardo, ‘Unity and Duality in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’, TSL 11 (1966): 11-18. She attributes the resolution of the tensions between authority and experience, male and female, metaphysical and physical in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale to the Wife’s “generosity of love” as effectuated in the action and advice of her Loathly Lady, which makes little sense.

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her on her terms may think that he is getting a foul and old piece of Eve’s flesh. But wait! she says. Marry me on my terms and you will find a metamorphosis in the bedroom. You will find me as lusty and young at heart as any young thing and willing to gratify all your desires. You will live and love “in parfit joye” to the end of your life. In much the same vein Miller observes here that the present message is that “it is foulness that is illusory; the female figure who appears to the young knight is ‘truly fair,’ but can be seen in her fair aspect only after the will of the youth has been purified by self-denial, made perfect by Obedience”. The Wife of Bath turns fair and foul upside down, juggling substance and accident, until the preferred choice is made by the knight. As Levy puts it, the transformation is “the natural consequence of his own corrected vision and insight rather than a miraculous transformation of the Loathly Lady, for [while] she has been truly beautiful and gentil all along; the knight had previously failed to perceive this truth”.70 The situation is precisely what old Januarie refers to in the Merchant’s Tale when he argues that a wife is “paradys terrestre”. The correspondence is evidently no accident, since the Loathly Lady as a senex amans and her young knight figure recognizably as ironic counterparts to the Merchant’s Januarie and May. It is of course also a romanticized re-enactment of the culmination of the Wife’s battle with Jankyn, with a sardonic Chaucer supplying her with just the type of speech in reproof of the knight which refers straight back to Jankyn’s reformatory readings during that quarrelsome period of her life. Derek Pearsall reads this moment as signifying the affirmation of “the marriage ideal [as] one of trust, the mutual surrender of power which we find called ‘patience’ in the Franklin’s Tale”, achieved through “the recognition by the man of the individuality, the inward reality of her existence as a person, separated from the trappings of youth, beauty, breeding and riches”.71 Likewise, in spite of an illuminating discussion of the Wife’s “deceite, wepyng, spynnyng”, Peter Brown sees as the end result of her Tale “an altogether different order of existence, one that is immeasurably rich and more complex since it is based on mutual understanding”.72 Though this comes close perhaps to the true essence of the tale and what Chaucer is ultimately implying 70

Levy: 106-22. Pearsall, p 260. 72 Peter Brown, Chaucer at Work (Harlow: Longman, 1994), pp 102-11, 118. 71

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here in a remedial sense, nothing could be further from the truth if regarded as the Wife’s own message. Trust is the one thing that throughout her life but particularly in her “purveiance” past and present, whose pursuit this level of the tale is all about, has been persistently violated by her and is still being violated here, assuming that Jankyn is still alive. What Pearsall and others also forget is that the Wife of Bath is a self-confessed liar and deceiver, which makes it impossible to accept her as the voice of purity. She is ruled, here and elsewhere, by a welter of self-interest, social aspirations and sexuality. Her voice is that of the siren, her words are a lure for the unwary, and mutuality in this most unmutual of women is but a fata morgana. The wonderful ending is in full accord with the sermonizing requirements that are pointed out by Owst. “The tactical preacher has probably taken care to leave as his parting impression the bold, stark outline of future penalties and future bliss”.73 This is future bliss, but only until “lyves ende”. Future penalty figures in the pages below. The Tale’s coda is an outspoken summary of the philosophy which the Pardoner already recognizes in her early Prologue. Here she prays Jesus, as if he were a stockist of husbands, to arrange for the delivery of husbands according to her specifications. Her majestic “we” cannot obscure that it is primarily herself of whom she is speaking and that it is Jankyns, reformable Jankyns, that she is shopping for. Note, too, the implied future reference in the form “sende”: ... and Jhesu Crist us sende Housbondes meeke, yonge, and fressh abedde, And grace t’overbyde hem that we wedde. [WBT, 1258-1260]

The Jankyn association is not spurious. It follows automatically from the triple nature of her coda, which, ranging from prayer to malediction, reviews the types of marriage that she knows. There is the reformed Jankyn and his look-alikes to come, for whose grace she is more than willing to pray. Then there are those “that noght wol be governed by hir wyves” whose speedy demise is all that she asks: “I praye Jhesu shorte hir lyves”. Which is exactly what happened to her fourth husband. And in conclusion she heartlessly prays that for

73

Owst, Preaching, p 330.

368 | The Wife of Bath’s Sermon ... olde and angry nygardes of dispence God sende hem soone verray pestilence! [WBT, 1263-1265]

Obviously, this final passage refers to her first three marriages and her old and niggardly husbands. How much she despised them is made abundantly clear in her Prologue, yet the measure of her dislike is somewhat shocking. Wishing a pestilence upon a husband when one lives in the fourteenth century is something in the order of living in the nineteen-forties and invoking a holocaust upon a Jewish partner. It is heartless, though this is a point that does not properly belong here but with the sentence. We may also note here that, even if this takes place within a marriage context, the Wife’s coda is easily readable as a sardonic paraphrase of the words spoken by Gower’s Venus, who similarly rejects those who do not truly serve her and particularly those who are too old to do so. On the present level of the Wife of Bath’s preaching efforts there are two loose ends to be tied up. One of them is the recurrent claim by Chaucer scholars that the maistrie which she so desires runs counter to both her actual practice in the case of Jankyn and here at the end of the Tale. She desires to be mastered in bed, but to be herself the master in all other things. Alternatively, she is thought to prefer the fight to the victory,74 but this may be too modern and psychological a way of looking at her. After all, the bedroom aspect has been made amply clear by her when she says that the husbands that she wants must be her debtor and her thrall. This means that, however well a husband may be able to “glose” her (like Jankyn), it is ultimately she who calls the shots. That she requires someone feisty and masterful in bed does not detract from the essence of this theme. Alternatively, the inconsistency of the Wife’s marriage advertisement, if there at all, is perhaps best attributed to a wish on Chaucer’s own part to suggest that no woman, even when given a free rein, knows what is good for her. Though by no means essential to our general argument, the resolution of the other loose end would be wonderful. Who is the unknown at whom all the Wife’s sermonizing is directed? The facile answer is that we, Chaucer’s audience through the ages, are the ones who are asked to search our souls and put ourselves the question if we 74

Cf Patricia Anne Magee, ‘The Wife of Bath and the Problem of Mastery’, MSE 3 (1971): 40-45; Burton, passim; Benson, p 873.

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would succumb to her package deal. Yet it is also and eminently clear from the Wife’s self-portrait that Chaucer casts her as a practical and well-prepared character, so much so that in the event of some husband’s death there has always been a successor standing in the wings. Even her “ideal” marriage to Jankyn, whether alive or dead, will not sway her from this practice. Thus, when we find her advertising her availability for a sixth marriage, it would be out of character for her to do so for the sake of scoring an academic victory. Nor can she be seriously thought to be preaching feminist views of marriage at the other women of the Canterbury pilgrimage, since there are only two of them and nuns at that. When we think about it, there is the perfect pilgrim to qualify and he stands out conspicuously. Who is “twenty yeer of age [...], I gesse”, just like Jankyn who “was, I trowe, a twenty winter oold”, “a lovyere”, a good-looker, accomplished in all sorts of thing and so hot a lover “that by nyghtertale,/He sleep namoore than dooth a nyghtyngale”? Who is, just as the Wife’s reformed knight, “curteis [...], lowely, and servysable”? And, interestingly, who turns out to be actually named Jankyn, as we learn at the end of the Summoner’s Tale [2288]? This is all speculation, of course, but if it is indeed the Squire at whom the Wife of Bath directs her marriage commercial, this would explain much. It gives us a logical target, explains the why and wherefore of the courtly elements in her Tale even better than anything else, since it involves someone of courtly stature as well as an ardent servant of ladies. It accounts for the presence and length of the gentilesse speech, which in this light allows itself to be interpreted as a defence of interclass marriage and middle class “poverty” and it tells us why the nameless “hero” of her tale is cast as a “lusty bacheler” – these being the very words of Chaucer’s own description of the Squire in the General Prologue. Regrettably, there is no awareness on the Squire’s part of any designs by the Wife. Yet it is a tantalizing thought, supported by his Tale’s presence in the middle of the Marriage Debate, that its unfinished state may be due to uneffectuated plans that Chaucer had for him after having tried out those which he had for the Wife. A final aspect to be noted here is that at the end of the day the Wife of Bath stands revealed as a senex amans, an identification underlined a few pages ago by her alter ego, the Loathly Lady. This links up nicely with Gower’s taunt about old lovers, including himself. With an ironical gender switch, as the senex amans is proverbially a

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foolish old male, it is Venus’ representative on earth who is now so depicted. In its turn, this links up with Chaucer’s portrait of the Squire which, as Tuve has shown, is indebted to contemporary illustrations of the month of May75 and allows us to recognize in Wife and Squire an ironical and reversed representation of Januarie and May. In the light of the anti-Wife message of the Merchant’s Tale it is tempting to read this as intentional. The Sentence of the Wife of Bath’s Sermon The sentence of a sermon text, Latin sententia, is all about the doctrinal implication, about what the theme and its attendant elements mean in terms of vice and virtue, sin and redemption. As such it comes close to the modern English meaning, for it is quite a judgemental way of looking at things. It is also, as we are learning to appreciate, one of Chaucer’s favourite ways of indicating where he stands. His hang-thyself approach, whereby his characters are made to pass implicit judgement upon themselves through their tales, is found all over the Canterbury Tales. Curiously, at least in the perspective of this study, this sentencebound level of the Wife of Bath’s story has received quite a bit of attention from Chaucer scholars. At some time in the middle of the twentieth century great interest was generated by the recogniton of patristic influences on Chaucer and its implication for his tales. Robert P. Miller’s seminal article on the Pardoner did much to open the way for an appriciation of deeper levels in some of Chaucer’s writings. Owst’s Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England contributed a wealth of insights on both the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath. And, perhaps most insightful of all, though somewhat on the wild side, there was D.W. Robertson Jr, whose Preface to Chaucer provides, among other things, an imposingly well-documented and informed platform for a closer reading of the Wife of Bath’s arguments in her early Prologue. At this point, a slight note of warning may be appropriate. What we are doing here is read Chaucer by the exegetical signs that he has left for us. The problem is not in the signs themselves, for, as any inspection of either Robinson’s or Benson’s notes goes to show, we 75

Tuve, pp 46-70, 170-191.

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must judge the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale to be riddled with them, something that is frequently indicated by manuscript glosses. The point of course is how to deal with them. One pitfall, not easily avoided and no doubt occasionlly succumbed to, is a mistaken assignation of the sense of a sign to the sentence and vice versa. Another difficulty, now that we are dealing with the sentence, is that this turns out to be a two-edged sword. Thus, on one hand, there are a host of indications that underline the essential, exegetical badness of the Wife of Bath. On the other, there are abundant signs that do no such thing but, instead, indicate the remedial possibilities involved. Frequently, too, they do both. In the case of the Wife of Bath the sentence is particularly obvious in the first 160-odd lines of her Prologue. We know that the Wife has been “somdel deef” ever since her great fight with Jankyn. Exegetically and physiognomically we realize this deafness to signify the much more worrisome condition of spiritual deafness.76 This interpretation is made unavoidable by the extreme length of the passage describing how she came to be deaf, over 150 lines long and an unmistakable sign, which deals with Jankyn’s book of “wikked wyves”. She is one of them, and her persistent refusal to listen to spiritual guidance exposes the extent of her self-confessed incorrigibility. As we already know, in terms of mortal sin her attitude stands for Pride in a variety of shades, such as Inobedience, Arrogance and Presumption. This “deafness” is made plain straightaway by her discarding of auctoritee in favour of experience as soon as she enters upon the scene. Exegetically, experience stands for reliance on the lessons of the here and now, instead of the divinely inspired wisdom furnished by the Bible and the Church Fathers. In other words, she prefers to rely upon herself rather than the word of God. Yet her subsequent defence of serial marriage, from her ante-theme’s start to finish at line 162, is almost integrally drawn from St Jerome’s Epistola adversus Jovinianum. The remainder of her argument, too, relies entirely upon auctoritee, generally the Bible and occasionally the Roman de la Rose. Thus the totality of sources that she quotes must doubtless be seen as belonging to Chaucer’s signs and quite sardonic ones at that. There is much irony involved in the Wife of Bath application of Jovinian’s arguments against the orthodox stance on marriage and 76

Not in Curry, Medieval Sciences. But cf Robertson, pp 320-21, for an explicit identification.

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remarriage, when the entire point of the Epistola is the refutation of the latter’s views.77 The implicit condemnation that we encounter here cannot fail to reflect Chaucer’s own outlook. His orthodoxy is nowhere in question, even though he is evidently aware of and shares his age’s contempt of its widespread ecclesiastical corruption. But with Chaucer on the side of the angels, the outlook for the Wife of Bath is grave indeed, particularly when we consider that she is depicted as presuming to act as an ecclesiaste herself, engaged in what we might term another aspect of exerting maistrie. An extensive discussion of the Wife of Bath’s spiritual predicament, as implied in this part of her Prologue, is found in Robertson.78 He dissects in great detail her various arguments and generally exposes them as following the letter of the Old Law (pre-Christ and thus pre-grace and pre-salvation thinking) instead of the spirit of the New Law, which promises redemption and admission to the New Jerusalem or Heaven. Oldness of the flesh versus newness of the spirit, the five senses of the body versus the sixth age of Christ and spiritual understanding – these are some of the underlying concepts that he traces in the course of the Wife’s ante-theme. The catchword for the entire discussion is the sacramental nature of marriage, a notion which the Wife of Bath fights tooth and nail in her earthbound conception of marriage as being the ideal place for bringing the sexual organs together. The Wife of Bath is not beyond misrepresenting her text: I woot wel Abraham was an hooly man, And Jacob eek, as ferforth as I kan; And ech of hem hadde wyves mo than two, And many another holy man also. [WBProl, 55-58]

Abraham married only once, Jacob married twice and then only as a result of Laban’s trickery, so that the Wife’s claim here is shown up to be entirely unfounded.79 Something similar is found in her treatment of Christ’s meeting at the well with the Samaritan who has “yhad fyve housbondes”. As the Wife of Bath herself makes clear, this was a popular argument against remarriage. There are several important aspects to this pass77

Robinson, pp 698-99. Robertson, pp 320-30. 79 The observation is not drawn from Robertson but is mine. 78

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age. Chief among these is the fact that the Samaritan has not only had five husbands, but is living in sin with another man. Once we consider the rest of what the Wife tells us, it is clear that the Samaritan’s case is included here by Chaucer as a major interpretational key to her own five marriages and her present “purveiance” of a new candidate. It is also why, on the Wife’s part, Christ’s remark that “ilke man that now hast thee/Is noght thyn housbonde” is made out to be some sort of mumbo jumbo (“What that he mente therby, I kan nat seyn”). The last thing that she wishes is for her search for someone “meeke, yonge, and fressh abedde” to be transparent to everybody and incur their censure. The exegetical importance of the text lies primarily in the fact of the Samaritan’s conversion. Robertson points out that exegetically her status in life comes down to preferring sensuality to spirituality80 and that “Christ saying that her present husband is not her husband may mean that she should turn from the letter to the spirit, or, if the five husbands are senses, to spiritual understanding”.81 Within the terms of this sort of symbolism Christ is the Heavenly Bridegroom and his remark about husbands implies that he is the true husband, whereas the Samaritan being moved from her evil ways to accepting his admonishment is the human soul that is washed free by Christ. The implications here are damning. Not only does the Wife of Bath fail to be moved by the Samaritan’s example but she actively pits herself against Heaven as the more authoritative voice and relegates Christ to the position of a maker of obscure remarks. A third point is the symbolical homologation of Christ and the well, which turns him into a source of “living water”, a biblical metaphor for salvation. In direct contrast to this, a recurrent motif of the Wife’s sermon, lasting far beyond her introductory discourse on remarriage, is the matter of “freshness” and of “being refreshed”. Her idea of what is “fresh” is all sexual. On a doctrinal level, however, freshness is a matter of spiritual rejuvenation, of the newness of spirit that is attained by partaking of the living water of Christ’s message of salvation and the sloughing of the oldness of worldly encumbrances. Closely associated with this are those passages referring to other sources of water, all of which have a similar spiritual import.82 80

Robertson, pp 320-21. Robertson, p 321. 82 Robertson, pp 321, 329-30 81

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Thus the nature of the well at which Christ meets the Samaritan is also significant. St Jerome identifies it as Jacob’s well, the predestined lovers’ well where in the old days Isaac met his bride-to-be Rebecca and Jacob his Rachel. It is symbolically homologous with the rivers of Paradise and the fountains of living water in the New Jerusalem, and by implication also to the Church and Christ and whosoever’s transformation by the Word of Christ. The name that St Jerome uses for these women at the well is daughter of Zion – (virgo) filia Sion,83 a term that is similarly applied to the beautiful maiden whose praise is sung in Canticles and Proverbs and who is alternatively referred to as a hortus conclusus, which is everything that the Wife of Bath is not. This meeting is a prefiguration, the filia Sion representing the soul at the well of Christ’s living water and Isaac and Jacob standing for Christ, the heavenly bridegroom, who is the source of all spiritual refreshment.. The association with Canticles (also known as the Song of Solomon) may be a bit of a surprise to some of us in the light of their celebration of earthly joy and beauty. The medieval authorities are agreed, however, that Canticles must be taken figuratively. As St Jerome himself states emphatically, “Canticum canticorum non significat amorem carnis”.84 Proverbs, too – the Bible book, that is – mentions the filia Sion, but here a darker note creeps in, for she is contrasted in various places with an evil counterpart. This is a stranger, not of Israel, who is neither virgin nor filia Sion. The Samaritan is precisely such a woman, but by heeding Christ’s admonition and mending her ways she is changed into one who drinks from the well of Christ’s living water. Needless to say, the Wife of Bath stands self-indicted here as a similar filia non Sion but this lady is not for turning. This Jeromian excursion serves a purpose, as we shall return to it a number of times in the pages to come. Of course, Robertson – and others after him – deals more than adequately with the Wife of Bath’s theme and ante-theme, even going so far as refer to this as her “sermon”. True, a deeper discussion of the Jerome-Jovinian aspects, with more extensive recourse to the Parson’s Tale, would have been a wonderful aid, as these are major sources that Chaucer uses here and in other places. Still, Robertson’s patristic angle, based chiefly on St Augustine, is entirely to the point here and quite revealing. 83 84

St Jerome, p 255. St Jerome, p 251. “Canticles does not signify carnal love”.

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It is time for us to pause and consider before continuing with the rest of the Wife’s sermon. During the last few lines of her antetheme she has made her clearest statement so far on the subject of maistrie. As this is the core of all that she preaches let us ask what it comes down to exegetically. The marital sovereignty which she demands not only stands for a reversal of traditional social order but actually seeks to reverse the natural order of things as ordained by God himself. St Jerome, with whom Chaucer seems to have found the notion of maistrie, which the former calls potestas, states expressly that “uxor proprii corporis non habet potestas, sed vir” and is so instituted in order to avoid fornicatio.85 In advocating this reversal the Wife of Bath shows herself to be an unregenerate old Eve, clinging to the flesh and its mortal pleasures instead of embracing the newness of the spirit which Christ offers when the soul submits to his power. When we consider that maistrie stands for the husband’s unlimited sexual gratification (fornicatio) in the here-and-now upon his full submission to her domination, the heterodox if not heretical nature of the Wife’s message becomes obvious. It is the negation of the sacramental nature of marriage and all that the Church and Bible teach on this subject, namely the soul’s eternal bliss at the wedding of the Lamb, Christ the Bridegroom, whereby the soul is the Bride. Ultimately, it means that the Wife of Bath’s fight is against the potestas of God himself. Even Chaucer’s choice of the word maistrie is a sign. In the Parson’s Tale the concept of gentilesse is discussed as a remedial state for Pride and directly linked to this concept. Whoever is not motivated by gentilesse is subject to the maistrie of sin: “For truste wel that over what man that synne hath maistrie, he is a verray cherl to synne [ParsT, 463]. It can hardly be coincidence that both terms figure prominently in the old hag’s bedroom lecture later in the Wife of Bath’s Tale. Throughout the remaining Wife of Bath’s Prologue the ecclesiastical voice is a persistent one. Four out of the Wife’s five husbands go overboard in citing auctoritee against her by way of reproof. On this level of her sermon this comes down to an almost uninterrupted indictment of her impenitent ways. Without exaggeration it may be pointed out that about half of Robinson’s and Benson’s Explanatory Notes on the Wife of Bath’s Prologue deal with its ecclesiastical 85

St Jerome, p 255.

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sources and that almost all of them are condemnatory. The major ones are mentioned in the Jankyn episode. They are the Epistola Valerii ad Rufinum de non ducenda uxore of Walter Map, the Liber de nuptiis of Theophrastus, and the Epistola adversus Jovinianum of St Jerome. The Bible, too, is cited frequently. Everything that the Wife of Bath reveals about her marriages comes down to a self-indictment, ans we have seen in the chapter on her confession. Her old dotard husbands cite scriptural and ecclesiastical authority against her from dawn to dusk and the same thing holds good for Jankyn for a good part of their marriage. But there are also unexpected places where one can glean indications to affirm the presence of a sentential level. A major such sign is the passage on the wooing of Jankyn, which draws heavily on Proverbs 7. 1 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 18 19 21 22 23 25 26 27.

My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee… That they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth with her words. I discerned among the youths, a young man void of understanding, Passing through the street near her corner; and he went the way to her house. In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night: And behold, there met him a woman with the attire of an harlot, and subtil of heart. (She is loud and stubborn; her feet abide not in her house: Now she is without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every corner.) So she caught him, and kissed him, and with an impudent face said […] I have peace offerings with me; this day I have payed my vows. Therefore came I forth to meet thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee […] Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with love. For the goodman is not at home, he is gone a long journey […] With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with the flattering of her lips she forced him. He goeth after he straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks; Till a dart strike through his liver; as a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life […] Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.

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This passage, pointed out long ago by Owst, is one of Chaucer’s evident inspirational sources for the Wife of Bath.86 Here we have the filia non Sion in action once again and plainly these lines stood model for the Wife’s wooing of Jankyn or as to what Chaucer ultimately wished to imply by it. The text is clear enough. This is where he found his innocent who gets entangled in the web of the roving adultress whose “housbonde was at Londoun al that Lente”; this is the implied warning for the unwary pilgrim at whom all her lures are so manifestly directed. No less significant are the introductory and closing verses of the chapter cited here. The initial ones are an exhortation by a father to keep his commandments and live, which exegetically stands for God’s desire that his commandments be kept for the sake of Heavenly life. The concluding passage deals with death as the lot of those who follow the whorish ways of the filia non Sion, whose house is the way to hell and the chambers of death. Remember who could not withhold her chambre from a good fellow?87 Sometimes it is just a little detail that is the give-away sign. One such moment is when the Wife of Bath slightingly refers to her outfit: Thise wormes, ne thise motthes, ne mytes Upon my peril, frete hem never a deel. [WBP, 560-561]

Chaucer’s commentary becomes clear once we realise that the reference is to the fate in hell of those that “embracede and oneden [centred] al hire herte to tresor of this world” [ParsT, 192]: they shall be naked, body and soul. And, so adds the Parson, Where been thanne the gaye robes, and the softe shetes, and the smale shertes?/Loo, what seith God of hem by the prophete Ysaye: that “under hem shul been strawed motthes, and hire covertures shulle been of wormes of helle”. [ParsT, 196-197]

On the whole, there is little reason to delve more deeply into the sentence of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. The Wife’s impenitent selfexposure, as discussed in Chapter Five, has made it abundantly clear 86

Owst, Literature & Pulpit, pp 385-86. It is worth noting here that the phrase “a good felawe” is generally used by Chaucer to indicate a scoundrel (Robinson, p 661 note 395, p 667 note 650). 87

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that she stands condemned on every possible count of mortal sin. Her Tale, however, as her exemplum, is a different matter. There is no underlying stratum of religious quotation here to fall back upon. Yet sentence there is in various places. We noted above that the setting of the Wife of Bath’s Tale, with the young knight “rydynge fro river”, is reminiscent of paradise. This is why Chaucer adds the phrase “allone as he was born” as a plain sign of his Adamite nature. As in the paradise of old, original sin rears its ugly head, this time when the knight ravishes the country girl. The medieval exegete read the fall of Adam and Eve as a sexual thing, an interpretation that recurs here: it is the presence of woman that leads to man’s fall. The sin involved is lechery or, more generally, cupiditas (concupiscence). It does not matter that a switch has been effected here, man now being the prime sinner in paradise. What matters is that we are reminded of the exercition of sexual power as deadly sin. The knight, who on this level represents the soul, may be young (new) in body but is old spiritually. To signify the import of this passage, Chaucer formulates the rape in terms that repeat the Parson on the subject of this sin. It is one more sign to direct us toward the exegetical meaning of the Tale. Also note the “paradys terrestre” association that we have come across before. This is from Canticles and refers to the chastity of its bride, which Chaucer’s age interpreted as standing for both Mary and the virgin soul. The rape thus signals the loss of innocence and subjection to sin, a reading which well complements the other indications. Naturally, the knight is sentenced “for to be deed”, the very lot that was visited upon mankind for its fall. Arthur’s court, where this happens, is very much like Heaven, and Arthur himself reflects God graciously acceding to the intercession of his Queen and the female Saints. Neither Arthur nor Guinevere is referred to by name here, adding credence to the idea that it was intended for interpretation. Direct identification with Arthur and Guinevere is undesirable, if only for the latter’s association with adultery. The interpretation of the Queen as Mary is apt: to those of Chaucer’s century she is the “Lady of Tribulation rescuing the sinners and the straitened”.88 Like all mankind, our knight gets a reprieve, a chance at salvation. If he manages to find the answer to the riddle what “wommen desiren moost,” he will be safe. Salvation is in Christ, of course, and 88

Owst, Literature & Pulpit, pp 17-18.

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the way to this is in finding out what he desires of us most. At the same time, the Wife’s riddle has its own doctrinal implication. What bad women like her, filiae non Sion, desire most is to lead innocents astray and down “the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death”. This is not just a nasty interpretation, for the sentiment is repeated, in its own way, when the loathly hag sets the knight her own riddle – a riddle which is necessarily directly linked to this initial one. It is exegetically the broadest hint possible: women, as daughters of Eve, desire to drag men down into sin and mortality. On his quest for the right answer, which effectively constitutes a pilgrimage (a notion implied by Robertson and certainly appropriate enough to note here) the knight comes across a wide range of nearcorrect alternatives, all of them great favourites with the Wife of Bath: Somme seyde wommen loven best richesse, Somme seyde honour, somme seyde jolynesse, Somme riche array, somme seyden lust abedde, And oftetyme to be wydwe and wedde. Somme seyde that oure hertes been moost esed Whan that we been yflatered and yplesed. And somme seyen that we loven best For to be free, and do right as us lest, And that no man repreve us of our vice, But seye that we be wise, and no thyng nyce.[WBT, 925-30, 935-38]89

Now all of these are various species of deadly sin, ranging from Pride to Lechery, and it is therefore pretty obvious what the logical answer to the riddle must be: “Women desire to do everything that God has forbidden them to”. Thus, if the spirit is to turn anywhere for salvation, it is not to woman, for she is sure to lead it astray. To whom it should, of course, turn is to God or Christ or the Church. Thus it is that, almost at journey’s end, the knight comes across the old woman who is the keeper of all the wisdom that is in this world. Regrettably, she is not Holy Mother Church or Mary, Empress of Heaven and Hell, Lady of Tribulation rescuing the sinners and the straitened, even though fairies seem to herald the advent of good 89

Robertson, p 374; Several critics have remarked on this passage, since the enumeration is quite characteristic of the Wife of Bath. A random voice: “The list continues and contains all the things that mean a lot to the Wife of Bath. None of them, however, is the key to her character” (David, p 154).

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tidings. Instead, the lady is the incarnation of all that is old and foul in terms of sin and salvation. She is Venus, revealed in her true eschatological shape, and this is why her evanescent twenty-four attendant ladies are so reminiscent of Chaucer’s and Gower’s love visions. She is, of course, most of all the Wife of Bath herself, both physically and spiritually exposed in dramatic outline. She is a female version of Old Father Time, with the 24 hours of each passing day dancing the “olde daunce” of all that grows old and dies. She is experience incarnate, the devil’s dam, the mouth of hell. She is death and damnation. She is sin, mortality and the grave, as is easily deduced from her foulness, which is recognizable as the foulness of sin. Symbolically, this provides a perfect fit, for the knight is near death indeed, since on this last day the answer still eludes him. He is aware of this, too, which is why he is made to say “I nam but deed”. Not surprisingly this passage includes another one of Chaucer’s signs. It is a brief one, but very effective and very telling and showing a very sardonic Chaucer into the bargain. We find it when the knight suavely addresses the loathly lady as “leeve mooder”. Doubtless these two innocent-looking words were common parlance. Yet they crop up in one other instance in the Canterbury Tales in an analogous situation. This is the Pardoner’s Tale of all places and they are spoken by Death in one of his many manifestations,90 who, himself desiring the 90 For this and the discussion of the Old Man as a persona of Death, see the section on the sense of the Pardoner’s Tale in Chapter Eight. For a view close to mine, cf John Gardner, The Poetry of Chaucer (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1977), p 277. He reads the faerie dancers as the hours of the knight’s last day. A good suggestion which have actually used is that the hag could be Venus, though the attendant identification of the 24 ladies as the Graces seems most far-fetched: Zimbardo: 11-18 An identification of the hag and her dancers with the elf queen “with hir joly compaignye” who occurs in line 860 of the Wife of Bath’s Tale has also been suggested, as well as a further homologation with the Queen and her entourage sitting in judgement of the knight. Cf Cooper: 179; Brown, Carole Koepke: 18-35, esp. note 17. Michael Atkinson reads the dancers to represent time but sees them as doubles for every month in the year, “a year in which each month has had a double face of hope and disappointment for the questing, questioning knight”, and all this taking place in the woods of the unconscious. ‘Soul’s Time and Transformations: The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, SR 13 (1980): 75-76. Note the error here about the locale of the knight/hag encounter: the knight does not come across the hag in a forest, as Atkinson writes, but “under a forest syde”. If Chaucer had wished his readers to interpret the number of twenty-four as twice twelve, why – as a man much given to signs – should he have failed so notably by not hinting at this? Twyes twelve would have done perfectly here. For a rather perverse reading, cf Beidler: 113 note 7. “Given [the knight’s] character and his propens-

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peace of a grave, thus addresses the earth: “Leeve mooder, leet me in!” The correspondence suggests that all that is yet to come awaits a verdict in equally plain terms. The Loathly Lady’s words, too, point to her chthonic nature, when she says “Sire knyght, heer forth ne lith no wey”. This is the end of the road for the knight, just as the vanishing “ladyes foure and twenty, and yet mo” indicate that time has run out for him. Thus, with the hag identified, it is no hard matter to interpret the subsequent session of Arthur’s court, which delivers him into her eager hands. This is Judgement Day and his fate is that of the damned. This is shown again by signs, this time a whole series of small but telling pointers. Here is a voice lamenting for a soul lost. “Allas and weylawey!”, the knight cries in dismay, “My dampnacioun!” He is “constreyned” to undergo the wedding and Chaucer adds, meaningfully, Now wolden som men seye, paraventure, That for my negligence I do no cure To tellen yow the joye and al th’array That at the feeste was that ilke day. To which thyng shortly answeren I shal: I seye ther nas no joye ne feeste at al; Ther nas but hevynesse and muche sorwe. [WBT, 1073-1079]

The authorial voice which speaks here, rather than the Wife of Bath’s, is worth noting. This is a bit of commentary that comes straight from the horse’s mouth and what it says its entirely damning, once again. The “joye” and “feeste” refer to the state of salvation, as found in St John, the italicized lines echoing the weeping and wailing of the lecherous in hell, as described in the Parson’s Tale [863] and, significantly, repeated in the Clerk’s Envoy and the Merchant’s Prologue. They also imply the remedy for this state, which is penitence. “Penitence is the waymentynge [lamenting] of man that sorweth for his synne, and pyneth hymself for he hath mysdoon” [ParsT, 84].

ity for raping young women [sic], the dancing ladies would have been quite enough to attract him”. Difficult to credit is also Eric D. Brown’s ‘Symbols of Transformation: A Specific Archetypal Examination of the Wife of Bath’s Tale’, ChauR 14 (1978): 202-217. Apart from the daunting point of view, what is one to think of an interpretation of the figures of the dancers “as projections from the knight’s psyche”? I agree with the element of projection but surely it ought to reflect the Wife’s psyche rather than that of a flat character like the knight.

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The women’s court which judges the knight and in which we recognize the Wife’s notion of a court of love is at the same time a reflection of the high status that the Virgin had acquired in late medieval times. Owst cites a passage from a sermon for All Saints’ Day depicting as enthroned next to God “in a chair of gold, [...] the Queen of Heaven, Empress of Hell, the Blessed Virgin, richly crowned and arrayed, with a corresponding company of holy virgins around her”.91 Here, too, the Queen is accompanied by “many a noble wyf, and many a mayde,/And many a wydwe, for that they been wise” [WBP, 102627]. These three manifestations of “noble” women come straight from the Parson’s Remedium contra peccatum luxurie, where the catchword is “clene” rather than “noble” or “wise”. They are those who abstain from sexual activity, with the consent of their husbands, those who are virgins of their own free will, and clean widows who prefer Jesus’ arms to “the embracynges of men” [944-50]. Doctrinally, death is a stage of translation from this world to the next, be it heaven or hell. The knight’s marriage to the loathly hag as a figure of death is therefore not surprising – death must be undergone in order to have a chance of being re-born. His choice of the old hag as his adviser now appears to have paid off badly and he has arrived at a place of horror. This is underlined by the knight himself when he points out how loathly she is and old and of “so lough a kynde”. These are all attributes of mortal flesh. He is in purgatory, where he must be cleansed of sin if he is ever to attain grace. Here, his new wife offers to amend the situation and in doing so produces an unmistakable sign to underline the import of what she is about to do: “Now, sire,” quod she, “I koude amende al this, If that me liste, er it were dayes thre, So wel ye myghte bere yow unto me”. [WBT, 1106-08]

Levy takes the italicized phrase to refer to baptism. While the notion itself is tempting and appropriate in terms of transformation from old into new, there is no textual support for it in any of the passages that he cites. This reduces him to claiming the “bath of blisses” and the Wife herself as being of Bath as references to baptism.92 If we are to stoop to this type of reasoning, what inference ought we not to 91 92

Owst, Preaching, p 517. Levy: 113.

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draw from the fact that she is not from Bath but from “biside Bathe”? Quaintly, what the three days do refer to comes close to Levy. Of course the reference is biblical. It could be to any of the following three things: Christ’s death and resurrection, his words on the destruction of the Temple and his power to rebuild it in three days (explained by the evangelist to mean the same thing), and the apocryphal but popular medieval Christian myth of the Harrowing of Hell.93 These three all come down to the same thing: the unshackling of humanity from sin and the passing from oldness to newness. The Harrowing of Hell association provides the best fit, as it takes us to a place much like the one where the knight is and the Loathly Lady is most suggestive of a Death Goddess, but any of the three will do.94 The signal meaning of the Loathly Lady’s words is clear. Her reference to the “dayes thre” is an implicit claim to equal Christ’s powers of rejuvenation, a boast that is made to come true later in her actual transfiguration and echoed in the coda when the Trinity is summoned to do the Wife of Bath’s bidding. Also, with the three days referring to Christ’s conquest of death and sin, her irreverent claim exposes her as refusing to bow down before this New Man. This is only natural, for as a clear manifestation of Sin and Death combined she stands for the persistence of Oldness and the only way for her to work any miracle is that of passing off the foulness of the transient flesh as more desirable than the encompassing beauty of the everlasting life that is proffered by Christ. Clearly, this consideration goes a very long way to indicate how deeply divorced the Wife of Bath’s spiritual state is from the grace offered by Christ’s sacrifice. What we have here is the filia non Sion masquerading as the true bride and tempting others to go down to her chambers of death. 93

Holland: 286. He points out that “if ‘dayes thre’ tipped off a medieval reader to anything, it was simply that submission to the loathly lady acts as a shocking alternative to and parody of man’s proper submission to Christ”. Also, Thomas A. Van, ‘False Texts and Disappearing Women in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale’, ChauR 29 (1994): 179-93, at 192 and note 9 at 193. He interprets the hag’s “er it were dayes thre” to refer to Christ’s words on the temple torn down and rebuilt, “words usually taken as reference to his coming crucifixion” and to oldness and newness. For a description of the Harrowing of Hell, which is my contribution here, cf George Every, Christian Mythology (London/New York etc: Hamlyn, 1970), pp 65ff; Philippa Tristam, Figures of Life and Death in Medieval English Literature (London: Elek, 1976), pp 184-212: Christ and the Triumph of Eternal Life. 94 Holland: 286-87. He takes the three-day reference to be indicative of “the Christ triumphant of the Resurrection”.

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This is where the “sermon on gentilesse” comes in again. We have come to know it as a clever bit of sophistry, providing arguments that even modern critics may succumb to. Here, where the sentence is concerned, it is once again difficult not to see the gentilesse argument as somewhat intrusive Thus, one is inclined to sympathize with Charles Koban when he heaves a great sigh and states that the sermon on gentilesse “seems to me to function more as a gloss on the plot and exemplary materials than as an integral narrative element”.95 He could not be more correct, for what he is basically saying is that it strikes him as one big exegetical sign functioning as a full-blown indictment of all that the Wife has been preaching. It reminds us that, just as Christ conquered death, so every sinner can conquer death by heeding Christ’s words and embracing virtue. Natural, God-given virtue and spiritual riches flowing from a rejection of the world’s temptations – these are the best ingredients for a life of everlasting grace. Those who refuse to heed such notions are doomed. This message, by the way, is found explicitly in the Parson’s Tale, 450-474, a passage which, as we have noted before, is directly associated with the maistrie of sin. Of course, this does not mean that there are no separate signs on this level of the tale. An interesting passage occurs when the hag says: Now, sire, of elde ye repreve me; And, certes, sire, thogh noon auctoritee Were in no book, yet gentils of honour Seyn that men sholde an oold wight doon favour And clepe him fader, for youre gentilesse; And auctours shal I fynden, as I gesse. [WBT, 1207-12]

There is a Bible text involved here, Leviticus xix, 32. “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of an old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD”. The Wife’s notion that an old person should be addressed as father reflects popular usage rather than biblical authority, unless we take it to be an associative garbling of fearing God and God being the Father. Obviously the reference signifies the need to fear God at a moment when the soul – the knight – is in great spiritual danger. It is worth noting that the Pardoner’s Old Man, as an evident parallel construct to the Loathy Lady, uses the same text in his en95

Koban: 236-37.

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counter with the three rioters, in a situation similarly fraught with great spiritual peril: “Agayns an oold man, hoor upon his heed, Ye sholde arise…” [PardT, 743-44]

A similar point underlies the hag’s discourse on poverty, when she refers this to Christ who “in wilful poverte chees to lyve his lyf”. To this we must add the Latin gloss at line 1186 which Benson translates as “He is poor who desires what he does not have but he who has nothing and covets nothing is rich, according to that which is said in the Apocalypse 3 [17]”.96 The hag, as the Wife of Bath’s mouthpiece, may be outwardly poor but she definitely covets the young and appetizing knight, thus turning the Bible text upside down. The apocalyptic context of the gloss is not surprising nor is the specific context. Here is Christ’s voice speaking as recorded in John’s vision: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire [i.e. truth], that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see... Be zealous therefore, and repent [3: 18-19].

The applicability to the Wife of Bath’s condition is plain. She rejects Christ’s truth, she is the Old Eve advocating a life of sensual delights centring upon “the shame of [her] nakedness” and preferring the delusions of the flesh, as symbolized by the hag’s transformation, to the true revelations of his word. She is the Samaritan unredeemed and sin incorporated. In much the same way, the Wife’s discourse on gentilesse has its shadow side. Gentilesse may be a God-given desire to be virtuous, but it also functions as an aspect of amor and kinde as practised in Venus’ court of love. The two-faced nature of the Loathly Lady as the Wife’s representative becomes quite manifest when we consider how neatly the Tale switches from virtuous gentilesse to its Venerean equivalent at its conclusion. “The gentilesse the Wife of Bath prefers is not the virtuous busyness of the ‘verrai gentil man,’ but a form of sloth consistent with her own excessive regard for fleshly comfort and her 96

Benson, p 874 note 1186.

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desire ‘to live the soft life of barren ease’.”97 I have been slightly dishonest here in this quotation by replacing Olsson’s Venus with the Wife of Bath, but it should be clear how well this fits and how close this takes us to the Confessio, which is what Olsson is talking about. Now that we are nearing the Wife of Bath’s Tale’s denouement, the knight’s/spirit’s predicament is becoming ever more pregnant. Given the choice between good and evil, between grace and the everlasting fires of hell, will he choose correctly? He must now trade in his knowledge of what “wommen desiren moost” for wisdom. The choice which he is set is between “foul and faithful” and “fair and fickle”. From a Christian view this appears to be simple, for this is every sinner’s choice between the “straight and narrow” and the “broad and easy”. But the Wife of Bath complicates things by making it clear that the only correct answer lies in leaving the choice to her, whereupon she will turn out to be both fair and faithful. This is having one’s cake and eating it, from a doctrinal point of view. However fair and faithful life in this sublunary existence may seem, at the end of the day the flesh will turn foul and its certainties evanescent. True fairness and true faithfulness are the reward of those who seek to attain heaven for all the world’s fickleness and foul doings. When the knight surrenders his choice to the hag, he surrenders his free will to her. With respect to the Wife’s doctrine of maistrie this means that he has given in to the world and its lures, rejecting heaven in favour of earthly pleasure and embracing the joys of the moribund flesh as his God. What Chaucer appears to be really referring to is the choice between the fairness of God’s maistrie and the foulness of being thrall to sin, which leads us straight to the Loathly Lady of the Wife of Bath’s Tale and the spiritual foulness of the Wife of Bath herself. The Parson’s commentary is as plain as it is damning. The quotation is from the first two causes that “oghte moeve a man to Contricioun”[141-57]: And God seith in the Apocalipse, ‘Remembreth yow fro whennes that ye been falle”; for biforn that tyme that ye synned, ye were the children of God, and lymes of the regne of God;/but for youre synne ye been woxen thral, and foul, and membres of the feend, hate of aungels, sclaundre of hooly chirche, and foode of the false serpent; perpetuel matere of the fir of helle;/and yet moore foul and abhomynable, for ye trespassen so ofte tyme as dooth the hound that retourneth to eten his spewyng./And yet be ye fouler for youre longe continuyng in 97

Olsson, p 120.

The Wife of Bath’s Sermon | 387 synne and youre synful usage, for which ye be roten in youre synne, as a beest in his dong” [136-39]. “As seith Seint Peter, ‘whoso that dooth synne is thral of synne’; and synne put a man in greet thraldom./And therfore seith the prophete Ezechiel: ‘I wente sorweful in desdayn of myself.’ Certes, wel oghte a man have desdayn of synne, and withdrawe hym from that thraldom and vileynye./And lo, what seith Seneca in this matere? He seith thus: ‘Though I wiste that neither God ne man ne sholde nevere knowe it, yet wolde I have desdayn for to do synne.’/And the same Seneca also seith: ’I am born to gretter thynges than to be thral to my body, or than for to maken of my body a thral.’/Ne fouler thral may no man ne womman maken of his body than for to yeven his body to synne./Al were it the fouleste cherl or the fouleste womman that lyveth, and leest of value, yet is he thanne moore foul and moore in servitute./Ever fro the hyer degree that man falleth, the moore is he thral, and moore to God and to the world vile and abhomynable./O goode God, wel oghte man have desdayn of synne, sith that thurgh synne, there he was free now he is maked bonde./ ..../Tak reward of thy value, that thou ne be to foul to thyself./Allas, wel oghten they thanne have desdayn to been servauntz and thralles to synne, and soore been ashamed of hemself/that god of his endelees goodnesse hath set hem in heigh estaat, or yeven hem wit, strengthe of body, heele, beautee, prosperitee,/and boghte hem fro the deeth with his herteblood, that they so unkyndely [unnaturally], agayns his gentilesse, quiten hym so vileynsly to slaughtre of hire owene soules./ O goode God, ye wommen that been of so greet beautee, remembreth yow of the proverbe of Salomon. He seith,/‘Likneth a fair womman that is a fool of hire body lyk to a ryng of gold that were in the groyn [snout] of a soughe’./For ryght as a soughe wroteth in everich ordure, so wroteth she hire beautee in the stynkynge ordure of synne”.

It is one of my convictions that Chaucer criticism has failed to pay sufficient attention, if any, to the debt that the Wife’s theme of maistrie – or her Loathly Lady, for that matter – owes to the Parson’s discussion of thraldom, both here and where it crops up in his Tale as a variety of Avarice [752-76]. Basically directed at misgovernment and maltreatment of the underclass, it discusses the suppressive wielding of sovereignty, of maistrie. Thraldom, as explained by the Parson, is virtual slavery and a matter of frequent social abuse, accompanied by all sorts of extortion. Yet, like gentilesse, it is not so much a question of class distinction but of spiritual stature. If gentilesse is natural virtue, thraldom stands for subjection to sin. And just as the ruling classes, in the Wife’s argument, cannot claim any natural gentilesse by dint of their descent, neither can there be any thraldom on a similar basis. Either notion is a matter of virtue and vice, and nothing else.

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Chaucer’s specific use of thral in the various stages of the Wife’s definition of maistrie represents a series of major indications on his part – signs – that she belongs to the “harde lordshipes” who make evil use of their dominant position and seeks to reduce men to sinners. She makes the Loathly Lady claim that “gentilesse cometh fro God allone”, implying the familiar late fourteenth-century sentiment that all descend from Adam and Eve alike. She then uses this as part of an argument serving not to establish the equality of all involved but to buttress her own notion of maistrie, which commands the effective thraldom of her husband. Surely this is irony, in the light of the Parson’s words. He rejects all social thraldom with the argument “that of swich seed as cherles spryngen, of swich seed spryngen lordes”, which is the communal descent argument all over again,98 and defines true thraldom as the very opposite of gentilesse, namely “that the condicioun of thraldom and the firste cause of thraldom is for synne”. That the Parson’s lines on thraldom were never far from Chaucer’s mind during his creation of the Wife’s portrait is affirmed in her Prologue where Solomon’s words, as encountered above, are cited by Jankyn in reproof of her loose living: A fair womman, but she be chaast also, Is lyk a gold ryng in a sowes nose. [WBP, 784-85]

To return to the knight’s dilemma, the fairness that he discerns is an inverted fairness, whereby “that which is truly foul seems [...] fair, and that which is harmful seems [...] delightful”. This is a matter of substance and accident, and what we are told here is that the knight is led astray by his own lechery and the lures that the hag comes up with, which are impure and lustful temptations. They are, as Miller notes, a reversal of spiritual truth, for the fair and foul dilemma relates to “the victory over temptation, when what was fair is recognized as foul because of purified vision”.99 Such purified vision should also discern, one feels, the doctrinal truth that in a spiritually true transformation it should have been the hag’s moral beauty that is ultimately revealed here.100 A further reversal is indicated by the knight’s accept98

The same sentiment crops up in the Parson’s discussion of gentilesse when he is made to say that “we ben alle of o fader and of o mooder” [ParsT, 461]. 99 Miller, ‘Wife’: 442-56. 100 Cook: 51-65.

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ance of his wife’s maistrie, for this comes down to an inversion of the sacrament of marriage, whereby the husband is the wife’s head in analogy of Christ’s overlordship of the human spirit. This is the dark side of the coin, for there is a remedial image implied, which is the interpretability of the Loathly Lady as the sponsa Christi, Christ’s bride, an encompassing concept including the filia Sion, Mary, the Church and the soul submitting to the will of Christ. How very fitting this is may be seen in the sacramental implication that we have just come across but even more so in the Loathly Lady’s transformation or rather rejuvenation or renovatio. Rejuvenation refers to the newness of spirit that may be attained through Christ, as we have seen before. This is the true message of the Wife’s Tale within its sermon framework, yet in the hands of the Wife of Bath it has become a parody dealing solely with the sexual activity which she proposes to engage in with those who submit to her.101 Chaucer himself makes this point amply clear when he lets her conclude her Tale on a note of bedroom “blisse”, adding that “thus they lyve unto hir lyves ende in parfit joye”. As his audience would immediately have understood, there is no such joy in this world of imperfection. Instead of the eternal bliss offered by Jesus she chooses “lust abedde”, which can only last until “hir lyves ende”. This is a fatal choice: “Deedly synne,” as seith Seint Augustyn, “is whan a man turneth his herte fro God, which is that verray sovereyn bountee, that may nat 101

Robertson, p 379. Cf R.E. Kaske, ‘Chaucer and Medieval Allegory’, ELH (1963): 175-92, at 181; Michael Wilks, ‘Chaucer and the Mystical Marriage in Medieval Political Thought’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 44 (1961-62): 497-98. Wilks’ point echoes Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, ‘On the Loathly Bride’, Spec 20 (1945): 391-404, at 402, who is well worth quoting here: “The myth of the Loathly Bride survives in St Bonaventura’s prediction of Christ’s Marriage to his Church: ‘Christ will present his Bride, whom he loved in her baseness and all her foulness, glorious with his own glory, without spot or wrinkle’”. The presence of a remedial level here in the Tale, which is repeated in the shape of the Pardoner’s Old Man in the next chapter, is a natural implication of the sentence, dealing as it dies with ultimate good and evil. It is also somewhat reminiscent of medieval Bible interpretation, however, which distinguishes four levels: 1) literal or historical; 2) allegorical; 3) tropological or moral; and 4) anagogical. It seems to me that the first two are the same thing as letter and sense, while the latter ones coincide with the judgemental and remedial aspects of the sentence. All the same, keeping in mind the further dimension that is provided by the Loathly Lady’s sermonette in possible reproof of Gower, one may well wonder if Chaucer was not trying his hand at including as many levels of meaning as he could, whether just for the fun of it or to demonstrate his writing abilities once and for all.

390 | The Wife of Bath’s Sermon chaunge, and yeveth his herte to thyng that may chaunge and flitte.”/And certes, that is every thyng save God of hevene. For sooth is that if a man yeve his love, the which that he oweth al to god with al his herte, unto a creature, certes, as muche of his love as he yeveth to thilke creature, so muche he bireveth fro God;/and therfore dooth he synne. For he that is dettour to God ne yeldeth to God al his dette, that is to seyn, al the love of his herte [ParsT, 366-70].

It is worth contrasting this with what the Parson has got to say on the other side of things, on penance fulfilled and heavenly bliss: Thanne shal men understonde what is the fruyt of penaunce; and after the word of Jhesu Crist, it is the endelees blisse of hevene,/ther joye hath no contrarioustee of wo ne grevaunce; ther alle harmes been passed of this present lyf; ther as is the sikernesse fro the peyne of helle; ther as is the blisful compaignye that rejoysen hem everemo, everich of otheres joye;/ ther as the body of man, that whilom was foul and derk, is moore cleer than the sonne; ther as the body, that whilom was syk, freele, and fieble, and mortal, is inmortal, and so strong and so hool that ther may no thyng apeyren [impair] it;/ther as ne is neither hunger, thurst, ne coold, but every soule replenyssed with the sighte of the parfit knowynge of God./ This blisful regne may men purchace by poverte espiritueel, and the glorie by lowenesse, the plentee of joye by hunger and thurst, and the reste by travaille, and the lyf by deeth and mortificacion of synne [1076-80].

Much of what has happened to the knight from the moment of marriage seems echoed in this passage, with its reference to the “wo” and “grevaunce” that turn to bliss, the transformation from foulness to brightness greater than the sun’s and the “blisful regne” and the glory that can be bought by “povertee espiritueel” and “lowenesse”. Plainly, this passage or one much like it underlies Chaucer’s implicit commentary here.102 102

C.S. Lewis (The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition [London: OUP, 1951], pp 15, 21, 33-34) notes that “Omnis ardentior amator propriae uxoris adulter est” (passionate love of one’s own wife is adultery) under the laws of Courtly Love. Judging the knight’s rapture at the hag’s transformation by this standard, he is evidently such a sinner. Interestingly, neither he nor the Wife can claim to be a courtly lover, for in Andreas Capellanus’ system the sensual person is disqualified. Also, courtly lovers “should serve all ladies, not all women”, a statement which nicely puts paid to the courtly claims of the loathly hag who, as the Wife’s stand-in, certainly is no more a lady than she is. On the other hand, an important recent study has indicated huge fluctuations throughout Europe in what was accounted courtly and what was not: Joachim Bumke, Höfische Kultur: Literatur und Gesellschaft im hohen Mittelalter, 2 vols (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987), passim.

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In full accord with this, we have the transformed hag as the knight’s “paradys terrestre”, who stands for the exaltation of the flesh, seemingly fair but inherently foul in its indissoluble tie with death and damnation, instead of the soul’s joyous and much longed-for union with Christ, the heavenly bridegroom, as symbolized by the filia Sion that we found in St Jerome, whose vision seems to be echoed here. Thus it comes as no surprise that the Wife immediately switches from the “parfit joye” of the marriage bed to an invocation of Christ, who is himself the source of truly perfect joy. This indicates once again that Chaucer is well aware of the implications of the words he puts in her mouth here. Note the presumption with which the Wife of Bath rejects heaven and the temerity with which she asks Christ to keep her well supplied with “housbondes meeke, yonge, and fressh abedde” and give his blessing into the bargain: And thus they lyve unto hir lyves ende In parfit joye; and Jhesu Crist us sende Housbondes meeke, yonge, and fressh abedde, And grace t’overbyde hem that we wedde. [WBT, 1257-1260]

Perhaps the best sign of all is the fashion in which the Wife is made to round off her sermon. Instead of ending with an invocation of grace upon her hearers, which is what we ought to expect from a proper sermon, she concludes with a witchlike malediction: And eek I praye Jhesu short hir lyves That noght wol be governed by hir wyves; And olde and angry nygardes of dispence, God sende hem soone verray pestilence! [WBT, 1261-64]

As I have pointed out, this is blasphemy. The Wife is not content to preach a heterodox philosophy of carnal marriage in this world, based upon the superior insight that she feels to have drawn from experience. This is bad enough, since it means that she rejects the authority of Christ and the Church on the subject of marriage and, in consequence, on the subject of grace as well. But she is moved to reach further and attempt the unspeakable. As the great advocate of physical love under her rule, she presumes to ask Christ, who is divine love incarnate and the husband and master to whom her soul should submit, to help her pervert his teachings and commit fornicatio with

392 | The Wife of Bath’s Sermon

delectable husbands. As if this is not enough, she further prays that he cut short the lives of those who refuse to do her anti-Christian bidding. Still worse is her evil curse upon old and niggardly husbands, in which she dares to involve God. The enormity of the curse has been outlined before. Ultimately, what is at issue here is a point of the highest magnitude, the most damning implication in the entire Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, which is that the Wife of Bath is presuming to deal with Christ and God as if they were biddable extensions of her, males, and therefore implicitly subject to her maistrie, standing – just like all her husbands, past and future – thrall at her beck and call. It is not as if we ought to be surprised by the Wife’s impenitent coda. Its exposure of the nature of her philosophy is entirely logical in the light of all that she has been preaching. What it displays here has always been the implication of her maistrie, the manifest consequence of her rejection of the sacramental side of marriage and its attendant rejection of Christ, not to mention her opposition of a divinelyinstuted natural order and hence God himself. All this we know by now and we know it quite well. What is surprising is that, unlike the Pardoner, she should get away with such scandalous and heterodox preaching without a voice raised in immediate protest.103 Unless I have been entirely wrong and there is no such thing as a maistrie sermon by the Wife of Bath, how are we to account for the absence of any outraged reaction, which elsewhere, as in the Pardoner’s case, is swift and deadly? It can hardly have been Chaucer’s desire to let her get away with such iconoclastic and frankly unorthodox propaganda. We should not be misled by the absence of raucous protest. The Pardoner is vermin and gets what is coming to him in the manner befitting him. The Wife of Bath, on the other hand, is – however ironically – a “dame” and gets treated accordingly. No one is letting her get away with anything, but her heresies link up intimately with the psycho-social climate of the time and evidently are sufficient reason for Chaucer to come up with a train of further tales discussing her, weighing her and commenting upon her and the “wo that is in mariage” – the Marriage Group – and much of the commentary, such as the Merchant’s Tale and Lenvoy de Chaucer, is quite damning. In conclusion, let us consider this chapter’s findings. A sermon structure is demonstrably present and so is a multi-level interpretabil103

A very similar argument is found in Cook: 60-62.

The Wife of Bath’s Sermon | 393

ity of the Wife of Bath’s Tale as a sermon exemplum. Chaucer provides ample indications of this in the shape of signs, and, on the whole, a consistent picture has come to light. In fact, to those familiar with medieval homiletics, the Wife’s preaching venture may well look superior to much that one encounters in the actual records and handbooks. True, good points may have been overlooked that should have been obvious, nor is it impossible for bits of the sense and sentence to have been garbled. There must also be much more to the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale that will allow itself to be uncovered once sifted through with a finer comb than mine, so that at the end of the day some of this chapter’s conclusions may ultimately require modification. On the whole, however, it seems to me that there can be little doubt that we have been dealing here with a magnificent literary equivalent of late fourteenth-century preaching.

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8. The Pardoner’s Double Sermon The Sermon Structure It is a fact long recognized that elements of the Pardoner’s Tale are structured along the lines of late medieval preaching, which is not surprising since the Pardoner himself announces that he will preach to the Canterbury fellowship one of his stock sermons. This is known as his “sample sermon”, often referred to as the Homily on the Tavern Sins. Yet the accordance looks somewhat irregular and wanting, on which basis it is usually regarded as a “loose” sermon of the older type, in contrast with the so-called “modern university” type that we know to have been increasingly in vogue in Chaucer’s day. The basis for the present-day consensus was laid down by Manly who “identified in the prologue and tale three or four of the six usual parts of a formal sermon”. Benson sums up thus: “the theme (VI.334); the protheme, a kind of introduction (lacking); the dilation on the text (lacking); the exemplum or illustrative anecdote (463-903); the peroration, or application (904-15); and the closing formula (perhaps 916-18)”.1 1

Benson, p 905. Quaintly, particularly in the light of the highly structured nature that I shall argue for the Pardoner’s sermon, there seem to be many who regard the sermon elements to be disjointed. Thus Carleton Brown, p xii, who supports the “loose” sermon view, feels that “it is impossible to make the Prologue and Tale conform to anything like symmetrical sermon structure”. Much the same view is held by Dorothy Everett, who writes that “the Pardoner has led the reader to expect something related to a sermon”, but instead comes up with “a tale so presented that it will create the illusion of a sermon”. ‘Some Reflexions on Chaucer’s “Art Poetical,”’ in: A.C. Cawley ed., Chaucer’s Mind and Art (Edinburgh [etc]: Oliver & Boyd, 1969): 99-124, esp. 121-22. This is a view shared by Alan J. Fletcher, “The Preaching of the Pardoner’, SAC 11 (1989): 15-35, at 18. A.C. Spearing ed., The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale (1965; Cambridge: CUP, 1971), p 24ff, notes that even though “the Pardoner does not follow [homiletic] structure in any detail, [...] he makes virtuoso use of the many techniques of preaching”. A similar view is found with Lee W. Patterson, ‘Chaucerian Confession, Penitential Literature and the Pardoner’, M&H n.s.7 (1976): 153-57. Also, Nancy Owen, ‘The Pardoner’s Introduction, Prologue, and Tale: Sermon and Fabliau’, JEGP 66 (1967): 541-49. C.E. Shain (‘Pulpit Rhetoric in Three Canterbury Tales’, MLN 52 [1955]: 235-45, at 239) expresses severe doubts about any application of direct sermon rules; much the same sentiment is found in C.O. Chapman, ‘The

396 | The Pardoner’s Double Sermon

As it is, Manly’s is a serious misreading. There is ample reason to accept that the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale have their full complement of sermon elements, though – admittedly – a natural measure of divergence from the standards of ideal practice is unavoidably present, since the sermon serves a number of purposes, both religious and literary, just like the Wife of Bath’s. Yet a full-blown sermon is definitely distinguishable, running along lines very similar to the Wife of Bath’s, a factor which serves to underline the essential correctness of the reading that I propose. The basic problem is that Manly, Benson and others assume the Pardoner’s sample sermon, taken to run from line 463, to be the actual sermon – with its theme announced somewhat prematurely during his Prologue and interrupted by his confession.2 In this they are mistaken. As the introduction of the theme in the opening lines of the Prologue makes amply clear, it is there at lines 333-34, with “My theme is alwey oon, and evere was – Radix malorum est cupiditas”, that the true sermon begins. And thus everything that follows, to the very end of the Pardoner’s Tale, when at line 945 he gets into trouble with the Host, is part and parcel of this sermon. On this point Robert P. Merrix and Nancy H. Owen have, in recent times, strongly argued in favour of a full sermon structure. As the former states, “it is a sermon, carefully unified, and quite similar to the university or ‘modern’ sermons”. He, too, points out that the confession is not an interruption but “an integral part of the Pardoner’s sermon and cannot be separated from it”.3 To a large extent, Merrix’ findings confirm those that we shall arrive at in this chapter, though there is partial yet substantial disagreement on lines 463-482 (“introduction to the theme”) and on the interpretation of the sermon elements from line 895 onwards. Nancy Owen, too, discerns a “sermon [which] contains the typical homiletic divisions and arrangement of the ‘modern’ style”4 but her identification of sermon elements is almost entirely different, with the exception of the theme and the major exemplum. Much of what we shall find here upon the subject of the Pardoner’s Tale: A Medieval Sermon’, MLN 41 (1926): 506-12, at 509; Gerould, pp 61-71; and G.G. Sedgewick, ‘The Progress of Chaucer’s Pardoner, 1880-1940’, in Schoeck & Taylor, pp 190-220. Even Scanlon’s excellent discussion of the Pardoner gets stuck here when asserting that his “sermonizing emerges incidentally” (p 198). 2 Cf Coghill & Tolkien, Everett, Spearing, Brown and Shain. 3 Merrix: 235-49. 4 Owen, Nancy: 541-549.

The Pardoner’s Double Sermon | 397

Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale as a full-blown sermon skirts the findings in Eric W. Stockton’s ‘The Deadliest Sin in the Pardoner’s Tale’, which also comes close to this study’s general argument by distinguishing two simultaneous levels of narration.5 What confuses the issue is the so far unrecognized yet demonstrable fact that we are dealing with an ingeniously constructed double sermon, whereby, roughly speaking, the Homily on the Tavern Sins serves as a sermon within a sermon. This construction is directly linked to the sense and sentence of the Pardoner’s preaching, along the following lines. The Pardoner promises the pilgrims a sample sermon. This they get in the approximate form of his Tale, which is a major exemplum adorned with further sermon elements, such as the Tavern Sins, to represent the divisiones and an application. At the same time, unbeknownst to the pilgrims, the old spellbinder has been weaving a web of words around them which, from the beginning of his Prologue to the end of his Tale, is a complete sermon in its own right and whose purpose is to manipulate all and sundry, in spite of themselves, into a state of contrition and an opening of purses. But before going into this, let us have a look at the apparent structure of the Pardoner’s sermons: Main sermon

Sample sermon

333-334 339-340 335-458 459-461

theme prayerful invocation ante-theme restatement of theme

463-659

dilation (divisiones)

454-462 463-482 483-659

660-894 895-903

major exemplum doctrinal application

660-894 895-903

904-915

financial application (offertory)

904-915

915-918 919-945

coda financial “reapplication”

915-918

theme ante-theme dilation (divisiones) major exemplum doctrinal application financial application (offertory) coda

There can be no doubt about the introduction of the theme – Radix malorum est Cupiditas – in lines 333-334, though the exact 5

Stockton: 47-59.

398 | The Pardoner’s Double Sermon

definiton of cupiditas here has set many pens in motion. The next 125odd lines, from 335 to 458, are the obvious ante-theme. They constitute an expansion of the theme which, like the Wife of Bath’s, is too long in terms of a regular sermon and is so for similar reasons: the Pardoner’s ante-theme is at the same time his confession and since he is an inveterate sinner there is naturally a good deal of sin to be confessed to. What seems to be lacking is the element of prayerful invocation that was marginally present in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, yet there is a case to be made for taking this to be implicitly present in the Pardoner’s adjuration: That no man be so boold, ne preest ne clerk, Me to destourbe of Cristes hooly werk. [PardP, 339-40]

Similarly, a further supporting bible text seems missing, but is technically present in the Pardoner’s statement that after introducing his theme and showing his bulls … in Latyn I speke a wordes fewe, To saffron with my predicacioun, And for to stire hem to devocioun. [ParsProl, 344-46]

At this point, the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner diverge, as the former’s confession is made to coincide with her dilation and its divisiones. As an ante-theme, the Pardoner’s is non-standard, dealing as it does with a detailed exposition of the Pardoner’s “praktike” and not – at least superficially – with a more specific outlining of the theme at hand. But, as Stockton points out, embedded in this confession are lines 400 to 434, which provide a more detailed discussion of Avarice and end with a repetition of the theme, something that is in full accord with regular practice.6 Some twenty-five lines later the theme is once 6

Stockton: 48. He correctly identifies the ante-theme here but mistakenly identifies it with the dilation, which is synonymous with the divisiones. Wenzel, ‘Contemporary Reading’: 138-61, objects to such an interpretation of the Pardoner’s confession, as he feels that an actual sermon does not use self-revelation as an ante-theme. But in doing so he forgets not only the preachers’ frequent declarations of their unworthiness (see Merrix: 240) but discounts all other narrative reasons that Chaucer had for combining ante-theme and confession. Thus, the chief point that he disregards is that the Pardoner’s sermon, just like the Wife of Bath’s, is not a real sermon but a fictitious one, even if it is preached in full accordance with the artes praedicandi.

The Pardoner’s Double Sermon | 399

again restated in paraphrase, this time as the thematic introduction of the sample sermon: For thogh myself be a ful vicious man, A moral tale yet I yow telle kan, Which I am wont to preche for to wynne. [PardP, 459-61]

From the ante-theme the traditional sermon moves on to the dilation, which is always identifiable by its three divisiones. There is no problem on this point, for this is where the so-called Sins of the Tavern come in. The sins involved here are three subdivisions of cupiditas, to wit gluttony, gambling (“hasardrie”) and swearing. There has been much debate on these three, as many have felt that they are not representative of avarice and suggest slipshod work by Chaucer.7 Certainly, Gluttony as a mortal sin in its own right seems quite out of place as a subspecies of Avarice and so does Swearing, which really belongs under Anger. What we must remember, however, is that in the medieval classification sin is always an overlapping thing. Thus, the sins of Gambling and Swearing are actually discussed together under Avarice by the Parson [ParsT, 793] as “hasardrie with his apurtenances, as tables and rafles, of which cometh deceite, false othes, chidynges, and alle ravynes, blasphemynge and reneiynge of God” and it seems logical to include Drinking, though this is strictly Gluttony, as one of the “apurtenances” involved.8 The difficulty also allows itself to resolved by the view taken by Makarewicz, who argues that we should understand cupiditas in a wider Augustinian sense:9 St Augustine distinguishes between a general and specific avarice. General avarice is anything that turns man away from God, specific 7

Brown, Sedgewick. Also, Lumiansky, Of Sondry Folk. As we have seen, it looks as if they are right and the three were inserted rather artificially at the time when Chaucer decided to expand the Pardoner’s performance. 8 As I have pointed out, the Parson’s discussion of Avarice is one that draws only partially (less than one-third) on Peraldus. It is therefore not at all impossible that Chaucer himself should have inserted the Sins of the Tavern in the Parson’s Tale under Avarice, for the very reason of providing a better fit with the theme of cupiditas. 9 Makarewicz, pp 216-17. Her insightful study, predating Robertson’s by a full decade, makes similar points and draws similar conclusions in many places. A lacuna, which is shared with Robertson, is the measure in which the Canterbury Tales’ major repository of patristic thought – the Parson’s Tale – is not brought to bear upon the subject. For a similar interpretation of cupiditas here, see Kellogg: 465-81, esp at 465.

400 | The Pardoner’s Double Sermon may be restricted to money and material possessions. In ‘The Pardoner’s Prologue’, however, Chaucer fuses theological and historical material, and personal observations to create a character who is a victim to cupiditas in the general sense. Hence, he includes the sins of the tavern for which the pardoners had proclivity.

To this we may justifiably add the specific form of Avarice, love of money, since this is obviously also one of the Pardoner’s proclivities. As for Chaucer’s familiarity with the Augustinian view, this is found in no uncertain terms in the Parson’s Tale, under the heading of “seconde partie of Penitence” [ParsT, 316-86]. Strictly speaking, the divisiones are introduced too late, as the Pardoner has already launched into his major sermon exemplum: In Flaundres whilom was a compaignye Of yonge folk that haunteden folye... [PardT, 463-464]

Yet all that follows moves from specific to general and thence to the divisiones, so that this slight preview of the actual tale to come in line 661 can hardly be accounted a problem. It is essentially no more than an oratorical device directed at keeping the audience’s attention directed at the subject at hand. Yet there has been much ado about this forward-shifting of the actual Tale’s beginning, and this also holds good for the further shift from a company at large to “thise riotoures thre”.10 What ought to strike us is the voice that we hear: it is authentic, drawn from life as it were, with all the natural little slips and errors that lie between a good performance and perfection. All the same, as we have learnt before, the evidence is that Chaucer’s late insertion of the Sins of the Tavern lies at the root of the problem, their threefold composition indicating that they were not included until the need for divisiones arose. In other words, the transformation of the Pardoner’s Tale along the lines of a formal, university-style sermon is probably a late development, implying that the original homily was along looser lines. The premature introduction of the exemplum, if premature it is, 10

Brown, p xvi; Hinckley, pp 157-58, is uneasy on some parts of the Pardoner’s Tale and feels that they were orginally intended for the Parson. There is good evidence that Chaucer interpolated the Sins of the Tavern (see Chapters Four and Six) and rewrote the ending of the Pardoner’s Tale (the clash with the Host). It is not unlikely that some further rewriting may have occurred in other places. The evidence on the three rioters, however, is that their tale was there from the very first.

The Pardoner’s Double Sermon | 401

constitutes Chaucer’s solution to the problem of how to introduce the Tavern Sins, as triple aspects of Cupiditas, in an appropriate setting and a good solution it is, too, for now they fit easily and almost naturally into the narrative flow of the Tale and of the pilgrimage itself. After the major exemplum there remain the last two parts of a “modern” medieval sermon: the peroration or application and the closing formula or coda. There is disagreement on the exact extent of the Pardoner’s peroration. Benson, following Manly, favours lines 904-15 (“Now, goode men...”, ending at “And lo, sires, thus I preche.”), elsewhere we find 895 to 915 (“O cursed synne of alle cursednesse...”).11 As it is, neither view is correct. The actual peroration starts at line 895 and from there moves through three stages to line 945 (“Unbokele anon thy purs”). First comes the doctrinal application, from 895 to 903. Note how here the three elements of the divisiones come together again, much as they do in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, though there it is the coda rather than the application where they do so: O cursed synne of alle cursednesse! O traytours homycide, O wikkednesse!. O glotonye, luxurie, and hasardrie! Thou blasphemour of Crist with vileynye And othes grete, of usage and of pride! Allas, mankynde, how it may betide That to thy creatour, which that the wroghte, And with his precious herte-blood thee boghte, Thou art so fals and so unkynde, allas?

Then comes the financial application in lines 904-15 (the “offertorie”, an additional element to the six sermon elements that we are already familiar with), which is the Pardoner’s call for money or goods in exchange for his pardons and relics: Now, goode men, God foryeve yow youre trespas, And ware yow fro the synne of avarice! Myn hooly pardoun may yow alle warice [cure], So that ye offre nobles or sterlynges, Or elles silver broches, spoones, rynges. Boweth youre heed under this hooly bulle! Cometh up, ye wyves, offreth of youre wolle! Youre names I entre heer in my rolle anon; 11

Benson, p 905, but cf Stockton: 48.

402 | The Pardoner’s Double Sermon Into the blisse of hevene shul ye gon. I yow assoille, by myn heigh power, Yow that wol offre, as clene and eek as cleer As ye were born.

Lines 915-18 are the closing formula, beginning with “And lo, sires, thus I preche”[PardT, 915]. What happens here is something that thoroughly confuses the issue. When the Pardoner says these words the suggestion is that this is the moment when he switches from the sample mode to the Canterbury here-and-now. But this is not so. We deduce this from the three lines that follow and plainly constitute the true prayerful ending and concluding coda for his imaginary audience: And Jhesu Crist, that is oure soules leche, So graunte yow his pardoun to receyve, For that is best; I wol yow nat deceyve. [PardT, 916-18]

His “lo, sires, thus I preche” in line 915 is therefore an anticipatory movement, foreshadowing his actual switch to the Canterbury pilgrims in line 919. To confuse the issue even more, instead of concluding, the Pardoner now picks up his offertorial application again (“But, sires, o word forgat I in my tale”) and continues until the Host’s explosion. This complicated situation is the evident result of the sample sermon and the main sermon coming to an end in almost the same place, the first application belonging to the sample sermon, the coda to both sermons, and the second application to the sermon proper. From a compositional point of view, what happens here is entirely reminiscent of the ending of the Clerk’s Tale, where, as we have seen, a second moralitas was added in order to make all applicable to the Wife of Bath. Here the same thing happens, this time in order to make the moralitas of the Pardoner’s preaching reflect back upon himself and demonstrate his thoroughly fallen state. Technically speaking, with the Pardoner destined for a fall and in no position to round things off when the Host tackles him during the application, this would have left the main sermon without a closing formula of its own. Chaucer’s solution is to make the sample sermon’s coda serve for both or, if one wishes, to shift the main sermon’s coda forward. Thus, recognizably, lines 916-18 constitute the true ending of the sample sermon. The Pardoner’s next “But, sires, o word forgat I in my tale...” are the natural transition to the main ser-

The Pardoner’s Double Sermon | 403

mon. By inserting the premature “And lo, sires, thus I preche” in line 915 Chaucer manipulates his text in such a way that the coda becomes incorporated into the ending of the main sermon as well. Though this reverses the normal sequence of application followed by a coda, the advantage is plain. The sample sermon is now formally rounded off by a closing formula, while at the same time the shift enables the main sermon to retain its coda even if it is in the wrong place. In terms of content there is no problem, of course, as the coda is obviously applicable to both sample and main sermons. Rather than constituting a clumsy assemblage of parts, this complicated situation allows itself to be resolved in a relatively simple fashion. The assumption has always been that the Pardoner’s Tale from line 463 to 894 constitutes the major exemplum. This is evidently not correct. As basically indicated by its description as sample sermon, the fact that has been staring in our faces is that of course the entire sample sermon is the major exemplum. To put it differently, what we are dealing with here is an internal sermon that in its entirety is used as exemplum. This is borne out by the consideration that this fits perfectly with the “moral tale” which the Pardoner has promised the pilgrims – a sermon that he is “wont to preche for to wynne”. How he goes about this “winning” is made clear in the tale that he tells and the sample application with which he rounds it off. Then, having finished his “moral tale”, he sets himself to effectuating a personalized application to the pilgrims themselves. In other words, what the Pardoner promises the company is a demonstration, which is as good a transposition as any of what an exemplum stands for (and calls to mind what the Loathly Lady effects with respect to the knight). Of course, the use of a sermon as an exemplum is not something that we find in other sermons of the day yet is quite compatible with the general nature of exempla as they were used at the time. As Owst basically points out,12 anything goes, as long as it captivates the audience and is properly instructive. Needless to say, Chaucer’s innovative use of a sermon as exemplum is the practical outcome of some extensive experimentation. As we saw in Chapter Four, the Pardoner’s Tale was probably a looselyconstructed sermon originally. It was subsequently remodelled along modern university lines, particularly through the insertion of the 12

Owst, Literature & Pulpit, p 149ff.

404 | The Pardoner’s Double Sermon

Tavern Sins as the divisiones. Work on the Wife of Bath’s new Prologue opened Chaucer’s eyes to the advantages of fusing confession and sermon elements (if they had not been so opened by the Confessio), which he then proceeded to apply to the Pardoner as well, thereby turning him into an absolute rogue and necessitating a new ending. In the course of this, we may assume Chaucer to have lit upon the sample sermon option. That he was well aware of this is borne out by the Wife’s Tale. Keeping in mind the exceptional parallelism of the Wife and the Pardoner, whereby these two serve as mutual controls, we ought to remember that her Tale also includes a sermonette within her actual sermon. Briefer than the Pardoner’s, more playful and serving a different purpose, it nevertheless reminds us that Chaucer was well in control and concerned with establishing parallels even there. A look at lines 459-918 shows that here, too, all the required sermon elements are demonstrably present. The theme is personal cupidity as the motivation for telling a “moral tale” and announced in lines 459-461 (see page 388). Then comes the ante-theme, starting at line 462 (“Now hoold youre pees! My tale I wol bigynne”) and continuing as far as line 471. Here the “develes temple” comes in and its related sins. Merrix also notes this passage but, unaware that there are two sermons coalescing here, takes it belong to the main sermon yet calls it an “introduction to the theme” – which is exactly what an ante-theme is supposed to be.13 The dilation and its divisiones cover lines 472-660, then comes the major exemplum in the shape of the tale of the three rioters ending at line 894, and its application at lines 895 (“O cursed synne of al cursednesse!”), which runs to the Pardoner’s “Lo, sires, thus I preche...” Finally, lines 916-18 to provide the coda. Thus, in a refinement of page 359, the actual structure is this:

13

333-334 339-340 335-458

theme prayerful invocation ante-theme

459-918

sermon as exemplum [incl. dilation and coda]

919-945

application

Merrix: 239.

459-461 462-471 472-659 660-894

[restatement of] theme ante-theme dilation (divisiones) major exemplum

895-915 916-918

application coda

The Pardoner’s Double Sermon | 405

The interesting aspect here is that, in spite of all the difficulties which this must have involved, Chaucer evidently took meticulous care to include virtually all the sermon essentials while at the same time taking literary liberties with their usual sequence. Obviously, this is not just a technical matter of arranging a sermon within a sermon but something that is also linked to the interpretational levels of the full sermon. What is puzzling, however, is why Chaucer should have gone in for such an intricate composition. That we are dealing with a deliberate choice is made plain by the parallelism of the Wife of Bath’s Tale, where, with an evident wink at the Pardoner’s Tale, Chaucer has the Loathly Lady go through her alter ego’s paces by preaching a sermonette of her own on the subject of gentilesse. The Pardoner’s case, however, transcends playfulness and is all about structure. Why is it, to mention the most obvious point, that the sample sermon should constitute a sermon by itself? It is true, of course, that this is what the pilgrims have literally been promised, but as a compositional argument it is rather unsatisfying. The Pardoner’s Prologue is likely to be younger than the Tale, meaning that the promise probably postdates the reorganization of the Tale into a formal sermon. Besides, Chaucer could have been much easier on himself and made all his points without going to all this trouble. The answer may well reside in the genesis of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale. Thus, the homiletic completeness of the sample sermon suggests that Chaucer’s initial rewriting of the Pardoner’s part may have been limited to just this. This links up faultlessly with what we shall find below, namely the presence of the Seven Deadly sins within its parameters, suggesting that the tale was orginally conceived of as a confessor’s complement to the extensive confession provided by the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. Presumably, it was only later, when he had his brilliant notion of making the Wife of Bath’s confession serve as part of her sermon, that he applied the same tactics by expanding the Pardoner’s Prologue. Most probably this coincided with the addition of the second application to the Tale, as it is the Pardoner’s self-confessed perfidy that creates room for a sentential level to reflect his spiritual status. For all this to have happened, we must suppose the rewriting efforts on the Wife and the Pardoner to have been a closely interwoven activity, whereby Chaucer switched ever so often from one to the other. This follows from the obvious fact that the Wife of Bath’s confession

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is a truly integrated part of her sermon at the same time, whereas the completeness of the Pardoner’s sample sermon exposes the Prologue and the second application as subsequent additions. The Letter of the Pardoner’s Sermon The Pardoner’s sermon is easy surface reading: the rascally Pardoner, suitably described by Professor Kittredge as ‘perhaps the one lost soul on the pilgrimage’, begins with a confession, or rather a boastful relation, of all his vices and fraudulent acts. Then he preaches a sample sermon, such as he is in the habit of using to extract money from his congregations. Feeling, no doubt, that in such a company of ‘good felawes’ whatever he tells will be privileged information, he keeps nothing back, but confesses all his dishonest motives and evil practices.14

He then narrates a sinister and scary tale, which begins with a tirade against the Sins of the Tavern and continues with the tale of the three rioters who swear to find Death and murderously do so after finding great treasure. “At last, reaching the height of insolent jocularity, he recommends his false relics to his fellow-pilgrims and invites the Host, as most ‘envoluped in synne’, to make the first offering. Thereupon ensues a bitter quarrel which it takes the best offices of the Knight to compose”.15 In this connection, a few words on the Pardoner’s own status may be in order. Described by Chaucer in the General Prologue as “a geldyng or a mare”, he has been taken by Chaucer scholarship for all sorts of man: interpretations range from a fullblown eunuch, through effeminate heterosexual, to homosexual.16 14

Robinson, p 10. Robinson, p 10. 16 Curry, Medieval Sciences, p 59-63; Miller, parts i, ii; Gerould, p 59; Benson, p 824. Cf. also Monica McAlpine, ‘The Pardoner’s Homosexuality and How It Matters’, PMLA 95 (1980): 8-22, at 8, who correctly points out Chaucer’s avoidance of specifying the Pardoner’s condition too closely. On the Pardoner as a homosexual, see Benson, p 824; Mann, p 146. In the light of the Pardoner’s outspokenness upon everything else that he does, it would certainly seem to be inconsistent for him to be a covert homosexual and claim heterosexual conquests (“a joly wenche in every toun”) in order to veil his real nature. Cf also Beryl Rowland, ‘Chaucer’s Idea of the Pardoner’, ChauR 14 (1979): 140-54, in support of her earlier identification of the Pardoner as “a testicular pseudo-hermaphrodite of the female type” – a definition wellsuited to tickle one’s sense of the absurd. 15

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Chaucer’s own vagueness ought to be a pointer here. His avoidance of any specific description is not so much a matter of delicacy as something linked up directly with the various levels of interpretation, whereby his confession is well-served by some indication of heterosexual activity, the sense of his sermon is neutral and its sentence requires someone incapable of either physical or spiritual productivity. The Tale itself is an old one but appears to have been drastically overhauled by Chaucer himself, to great effect. “Certainly the tale was never told better than by the Pardoner. In the management of the intrigue and the swift denouement it is a model of the short-story method. In atmosphere and characterization it is vividly conceived, and in the dialogue not a word is wasted”.17 What might have been added here is that in Chaucer’s hands it has also become a marvel of profundity, so much so that it invites us, by the questions that it raises, almost automatically to move from the letter to the deeper meanings which it promises. As such it is a much more effective tale than the Wife’s, whose surface meaning is less suggestive of deeper levels. The Sense of the Pardoner’s Sermon In discussing the sense of the Wife of Bath’s sermon we found that she has a secret agenda in preaching her sermon to the assembled pilgrims. We have come to know this as her marriage advertisement, though to put a fine point upon it we should read all that she says on this level as a self-advertisement directed at acquiring a beddable husband. The reason for this precision is the fact that the Pardoner has a similar agenda. He is engaged in a similarly stunning bit of self-advertising. Just like her, he is after personal gain but the form which this takes is not marriage but money, though what really lies behind it all are his pride and his anger. Like the Wife of Bath, he too picks the straight approach of revealing all and exposing himself as a similarly accomplished confidence trickster, with respect to both those he comes across while plying his trade and the present Canterbury fellowship. The resulting selfinflation is likewise reminiscent of the Wife of Bath – which leads us to the natural question of what exactly the Pardoner is up to. The answer is that the Pardoner is depicted as attempting to demonstrate his 17

Robinson, p 10.

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almost superhuman preaching powers along the very same lines that the Wife passed hers. Thus, after revealing all about himself, he means to open all his homiletic registers and preach a tale so overwhelming that he will get his fellow-pilgrims to dip into their purses in spite of everything. We might call this his sales advertisement. The Wife of Bath gets away with precisely this, the difference in her case being her special interest in “nether purses,” as she would say. Where she talks marriage, he talks money – that is as far as the difference goes.18 At the end of the day, what the Pardoner preaches is maistrie, too, but in his case it stands for his dominance over all the others, for his ability to outsmart a whole company of pilgrims, for all their open eyes. It is precisely this parallelism, by the way, which goes to confirm that in the final narrative order of the Canterbury Tales the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale were always meant to follow the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale rather than otherwise. A Pardoner cast as having observed the Wife of Bath in action and thinking to get away with the same sort of thing is much likelier than a Wife witnessing the Pardoner’s failure and yet attempting to imitate his efforts. It should come as no surprise, in this light, that in the course of the sermon the Pardoner’s theme undergoes modification. Just as the Wife’s theme shifts from the “wo that is in mariage” to maistrie and all that this involves, so his theme exhibits a similar drift away from the original definition. When he sets out upon his sermon his ... theme is alwey oon, and evere was – Radix malorum est Cupiditas. [PardP, 333-34]

Ninety lines later this is amended thus: But shortly myn entente I wol devyse: I preche of no thyng but for coveityse. Therfore my theme is yet, and evere was, Radix malorum est Cupiditas. [PardP, 423-26]

The words “myn entente I wol devyse” are the telltale phrase. They refer to his present situation, as expressed in “my theme is yet”. In other words, he announces that his present demonstration of a ser18

As we have seen, in my reconstructed orginal prologue the Wife’s drive is chiefly avaricious, thus linking her even closer to the Pardoner (Chapter Four).

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mon on the theme of cupiditas will be for his wonted purpose, which is personal gain. He is after his fellow-pilgrims’ money and goes so far as to inform them of this quite openly. Yet obviously all this smacks of an ulterior motive, one that we already know. What he is trying to effect is a demonstration of his superiority, of his ability to gull any audience under any circumstance. And the better the audience is forewarned, the better the game gets. Hence he rubs in the message once again for good effect. Though he switches to a more general voice now, he actually outlines the scenario which he has in store for the pilgrims: Thus kan I preche agayn that same vice Which that I use, and that is avarice. But though myself be gilty in that synne, Yet kan I maken oother folk to twynne From avarice, and soore to repente. But that is nat my principal entente; I preche nothyng but for coveitise. [PardP, 427-33]

These seven lines comprise his actual “entente” with respect to his fellow-pilgrims as the “oother folk” and this is, vide his Tale and its coda, precisely what happens, though the final result is not exactly as he envisages it. His next few lines are in the same vein and, to judge by his disdain and all that follows, constitute a dire warning: Thanne telle I hem ensamples many oon Of olde stories longe tyme agoon. For lewed peple loven tales olde; Swiche thynges kan they wel reporte and holde. [PardP, 435-38]

As if he has not been clear enough, he once more warns the others why he preaches his Tale: By god, I hope I shal yow telle a thyng That shal by reson been at youre likyng. For though myself be a ful vicious man, A moral tale yet I yow telle kan, Which I am wont to preche for to wynne. [PardP, 457-61]

In the meantime, the Pardoner has taken ample care to stress his own perfidy by expanding upon his practices, such as selling papal

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bulls and fake relics of the shabbiest kind, exploiting people’s gullibility and the tricks he employs in doing so. His exposition includes his personal preaching techniques, the use of signs against those he dislikes and the practice of telling stories about old times, “for lewed peple loven tales olde”, which naturally reminds us of the Wife of Bath and her choice of exactly such a tale.19 The pilgrims have now been told in no uncertain terms what sort of person the Pardoner is and what to expect from him. The crux of his efforts now lies in his ability to preach a sermon so overwhelming that he can manipulate some of his audience into an extreme state of contrition and thence to the purchase of his wares. If he can pull this off, the spoils will be unadulterated triumph or, as the Wife of Bath would call it, maistrie. This is not just wild speculation on my part. Significantly, for we are evidently dealing with signs here, in the two instances when the Pardoner reveals his entente he mentions “coveityse” as his motive. Now it is of course easy to take this word as a synonym for Avarice and this is doubtless the sense in that the unwary listener or reader is supposed to take it. Yet avarice would have been a perfectly good choice in both instances. Technically at least, “coveityse” is a broader, more generic term than “avarice”. A brief look at the Parson’s Tale is sufficient to show us that “coveityse” is none other than original sin itself and takes three specific forms, namely the coveting “by coveitise of flessh, [of] flesshly synne, by sighte of his eyen as to erthely thynges, and eek coveitise of hynesse by pride of herte” [ParsT, 336]. The italicized phrase is so much what the Pardoner stands for that it is hard to believe that this is not what Chaucer is getting at. But let us have no confusion on this point. The Pardoner’s object is a demonstration of his superior powers, a kind of maistrie, to be effectuated through the successful preaching of a moral tale that should loosen the pilgrims’ purse strings in the end. There is the remarkable evidence of the not-so-spurious endlink to the Pardoner’s Tale to show that the present rowdy ending probably replaces an original one whereby the Pardoner did get his chance to cash in on his preaching and the Host pleasantly commented upon his story-telling. Among the things that it seems to demonstrate is that the present reading of the Pardoner’s intentions is entirely to the point. 19

The joke involved here of course is that his discussion of signs is a sign itself to his audience that they will be treated to some of his practices.

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A tale has been promised and a tale is what the Pardoner’s hearers get. Yet at the same time this tale is part of a twofold sermon scheme, requiring both a processus or dilation and its divisones. Thus, hardly has he concluded his Prologue when he assumes his pulpit voice20 and launches into his sample sermon, the dramatic Homily on the Tavern Sins, which runs to line 915 when he says “And lo, sires, thus I preche”. First comes a 200-line exposition of the Tavern Sins, which, now that his sardonic commentary is lacking, has all the outward trappings of sincerity. This serves to put some distance between his self-incriminating confession and his Tale, to create among the other pilgrims a receptive mood for the story to come, as well as to provide a key for their proper understanding of the import of his Tale. The Pardoner’s Tale is markedly different from the Wife’s in its dealing with sense and sentence. Essentially, this is the outcome of the Pardoner’s double preaching effort. Strictly speaking, the sense of his sermon is related to his efforts to overwhelm the pilgrims with his sample sermon as a demonstration of his superior skills. Yet, as anyone will allow, this is effected through the telling of a tale so saturated with eschatological symbolism that we must adjudge it to be of a fundamentally exegetical nature. To put it differently, the sense of the Tale resides in the Pardoner’s attempt to apply its sentence to the other pilgrims, for very current purposes. What about the ultimate sentence, then? The answer is not hard to come up with. Just as in the Wife’s case, this lies in the application of the exegetical Christian meaning of his own words to none other than himself. The Tale itself is fast-paced and dramatic, crowded with symbolism centring upon the concepts of death and damnation. Chaucer’s version apparently derives from a thirteenth-century exemplum known as De tribus sociis, qui thesaurum invenerunt (The Three Companions Who Found a Treasure). The hermit who finds gold while digging a garden in a forest has been transformed by Chaucer into the mysterious Old Man who points the rioters the way to the money hoard. Several other aspects, too, are apparently original with Chaucer, such as the Flanders tavern setting and the quest to slay Death.21 20

The Pardoner’s preaching technique, though not described in the Tale itself, is sufficiently outlined in the Prologue, particularly ll. 329-34, 390-99, 413-16, 435-38. 21 Coghill & Tolkien, pp xv-xxxv; Miller: 234-41; more doubtful about Chaucer’s originality here is French, pp 268-71. Cf also Robinson, pp 11, 729. On the thematically pervasive presence of Death, again see Miller: 234-41.

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The outstanding feature of the Tale is unquestionably Chaucer’s consummate incorporation of death in an overwhelming variety of its perceived manifestations. We have truly arrived in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Wherever one looks, death lies in wait. It is there in the Tavern Sins, as Gluttony, Avarice and Swearing are all deadly sin. Gluttony leads to “dampnacioun”, its “ende is deeth [since] wombe is hir God”. Wine is associated with Samson (“Sampsoun, Sampsoun”), which calls to mind his catastrophic finale. Drunkenness is “verray sepulture of mannes wit and his discrecioun”. Hasardrie is the mother of manslaughter, while Swearing is an even more horrible sin in this context. Oaths being “commonly by the parts of the body of Christ”, this means that swearers “oure blissed Lordes body they totere [tear to pieces]” and thus call for a repetition of his suffering and death.22 The setting, too, is clever. The Pardoner’s reference to the “alestake” where they have arrived and where he wishes to refresh himself with a drink suggests that his Prologue and Tale are begun at a tavern, thus bringing his message very close to home.23 The tavern locale is an obvious one and dramatically appropriate to the commencement of the Pardoner’s Tale, and Tupper’s suggestions on this point used to be commonly accepted. The dissenting voice belonged to Gerould, who argued, not unreasonably, that the “alestake” whereat the Pardoner wishes to have a drink and “eten of a cake” refers to the Summoner’s “gerland [...] set upon his heed/As greet as it were for an alestake” and his “bokeleer” which was made “of a cake” [GenProl, 667-68].24 Gerould’s view looks to be the majority opinion now, which seems shortsighted. One, the views are not necessarily exclusive. They fit in well with the Pardoner’s duplicity and his evident liking for double entendre, as well as Chaucer’s frequent multi-level approach. Two, perhaps even more to the point, is the easily overlooked fact that, whatever the exact setting, the Pardoner does call for a drink here, thus designating the locale as the effective equivalent of a tavern. Three, a tavern setting is dramatically apposite. I therefore 22

The argument is derived from the Pardoner’s Tale itself, which identifies swearing as tearing Christ’s body to pieces [708-09]. Also, cf Parson’s Tale, 591. 23 Fredrick Tupper, ‘The Pardoner’s Tavern’, JEGP 13 [1914]: 553-65; Types of Society in Medieval Literature, p 97); Gerould, p 57. On this point also cf Sedgewick, p 201; Benson, p 904. An interesting note is sounded by Robert E. Nichols, ‘The Pardoner’s Ale and Cake’, PMLA 82 (1967): 498-504, who takes the cake and ale as a foreshadowing of the ensuing gluttony theme and the unholy Eucharist of the rioters. 24 Gerould, p 57.

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read the setting as a real alestake, yet, to be precise, take this to be where the tale is set into motion only. When at the end the Host and the Pardoner are requested to bury the hatchet [PardT, 966-68], they are plainly on the road again, for the Pardoner is asked to “drawe [...] neer” and kiss pax, and when this is done they “ryden forth hir weye”. If the Pardoner, having thus prepared his listeners for the horrible theme of death in ringing pulpit tones, now seems to switch to a subtler mode of parading death and its wages, we should not let ourselves be misled by this apparent change of emphasis. It is there only in our own minds. The Pardoner’s Tale is one of the few places where Chaucer mentions the word pestilence. We know that the Plague turned his world into one of unlimited horror and within this frame we must picture Chaucer himself, age eight or so, living through the first and most virulent outburst when one out of every three people in England died and thirteen years later going through a similar devastation and again eight years later and once again six years after that. We do not know how close to Chaucer these successive outbreaks struck, but it is difficult to imagine that many could have got away unaffected by the omnipresent human desolation around them. He is reticent on the subject, which is a common way for survivors to deal with holocaust-like events. Hence when we now find the term pestilence used by Chaucer, we should realize that this is the application of one of the most potent words in his entire vocabulary of death. Interestingly, one of the few other places that comes directly to mind for its notable use of the word pestilence is the conclusion of the Wife’s Tale. The first image of death in the Pardoner’s Tale is the corpse carried past the revellers, killed by drink. Then comes the personification of Death as the “privee theef ” who “with his spere” slays the people in the area. Next is pestilence as the death of “a thousand slain”. Then comes the revellers’ oath to slay Death, which comes down to a quest for death, which ultimately stands for death in the shape of self-destruction. This involves their swearing that they shall “lyve and dyen ech of hem for other”. Then there is the “many a grisly ooth” with its rending of “Cristes blessed body” and its familiar notion of swearing as slaying Christ anew. Also, we should note that the three rioters represent an unholy trinity and that their quest to slay death is an equally unholy denial of Christ’s conquest of death.25 25

Miller: 234-240; Stockton: 53-55.

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The sinister Old Man whom they come across, in a meeting which carries strong overtones of an appointment at Samarrah, cannot fail to be another manifestation of Death. His portrayal as one who is “al forwrapped save [his] face”, is all bones (“Lo how I vanysshe, flessh, and blood, and skyn! Allas! whan shul my bones been at reste?”), and cannot die as long as this is God’s will is highly reminiscent of the familiar personification of Death as a skeleton wrapped in a shroud. What seems to argue against this is his “Ne Deeth, allas! ne wol nat han my lyf”. Yet the notion of Death seeking death is a wonderfully ironic parallel to the undertaking of the revellers who also seek this. Nor is the death of Death an unfamiliar idea in medieval thought, its earliest expression being much older and found in the Old Testament, where the prophet Hosea says “O Death, I shall be thy death”. This is discussed at some length by the good Parson [20830].26 Doctrinally, of course, the death of Death is encompassed by Christ’s resurrection, which, upon consideration, makes the revellers deniers of Christ’s greatest miracle. Plainly, the Old Man represents the face of Death or, rather, a whole range of them, for he is in no sense unequivocal. Needless to say, this gives us a situation that accords nicely with all the other forms under which death is found in the tale. What Chaucer appears to have done is fit him out with a variety of lines, emblems, symbols and descriptive elements that all point at different aspects encompassed by the concept of death and its remedial counterpart – salvation. Though confusing, this many-layered interpretability of the Old Man is an integral aspect of the Tale. Here, more than anywhere else, its deeper nature is indicated. This is something that has also been recognized by critics, in the sense that a deliberate ambiguity has been remarked upon.27 This is entirely to the point. Even more than his loathly coun26

Spearing, p 42; Robertson, pp 333-34. The identification of the Old Man as Death or something very similar is popular and probably quite correct. One of the first with whom this is found is Kittredge (Chaucer and his Poetry, p 215), who not unreasonaby founds his identification on the Old Man’s remark “I moot go thither as I have to go”, which he takes to refer to the “affairs [he has] to attend during this pestilence season”. Others, too, favour this reading: Robert Kilburn Root, The Poetry of Chaucer (1922 rev. ed.; Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1957), p 229. There is nothing wrong with this, provided that we allow that Chaucer sought to incorporate various shades of Death, seeing how the rest of the Tale is deeply concerned with the many forms in which death can be perceived. 27 Derek Pearsall, ‘Chaucer’s Pardoner: The Death of a Salesman’, ChauR 17 (1983):

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terpart in the Wife’s Tale he embodies a multitude of shades of meaning.28 Thus, the Old Man’s words are an echo of the Parson’s words on penitence and on the condition of the wicked in hell: For lo, what seith Seint Paul: “The flessh coveiteth agayn the spirit, and the spirit agayn the flessh; they been so contrarie and so stryven

358-65, et al.; Benson, p 905 28 Other readings range far and wide. The Old Man could be Lazarus, an identification that I have not come across, even if he should be accounted a good candidate in the light of the Old Man’s accoutrements and his evident state of undyingness. He has also been identified as the Wandering Jew or Judas Iscariot, the latter of which begging the question why the money hoard fails to consist of silver: Mary Flowers Braswell, ‘Chaucer’s Palimpsest: Judas Iscariot and the Pardoner’s Tale’, ChauR 29 (1995): 352-72. G.K.Anderson, ‘Die Silberlinge des Judas and the Accursed Treasure’, SP 48 (1951): 77-86. To Hatcher, he is an object lesson to the rioters if they should manage to pull off their undertaking. “They fail to see that if they carry out their plan, Death will die indeed, but Old Age will live on forever”. This is an odd argument, but the idea of an object lesson is interesting and I have applied it here, though in a somewhat different fashion. Elizabeth R. Hatcher, ‘Life Without Death: The Old Man in Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale’, ChauR 9 (1975): 246-51, at 247. To Ellis he is an emblem of faithfulness (: 247). H. Marshall Leicester regards him as an externalization of the Pardoner’s envy, who is hell-bent for the erasure of not so much “physical decay but consciousness”. The Disenchanted Self: Representing the Subject in the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1990), p 49. Still another interpretation of the Old Man is that of someone intimately connected with nature, since he refers to the earth as “leeve mooder”: James F. Rhodes, ‘Motivation in Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale: Winner Take Nothing’, ChauR 17 (1982): 40-61. This can hardly be correct. The Old Man’s reference to his “leeve mooder” is all about having been born from dust and wishing return to it or may refer to his hellish origins. The notion that the Old Man should represent Old Age, or Eld, was first suggested by Jan Swart, half a century ago, and has been a persistent one. What its supporters fail to account for is that Old Age, if and when taken literally, does have a “leeve mooder” to let it in, since the earth has been invariably accommodatating to humanity at the end of this stage of life. See: J. Swart, ‘Chaucer’s Pardoner’, Neophilologus 36 (1952): 4553. Someone who perspicaciously combines the interpretation as Elde with saturnine elements and death is Tristam. Yet her solution of seeing the “skeleton in Holbein’s Dance of Death, who helpfully supports Age by the elbow as he steps down into his grave, [as] the answer to this Old Man’s prayer” seems to me all wrong. Who is who here and, besides, is not the matter of the inaccessibility of his “mooders gate” overlooked? (Tristam, pp 184-212). John M. Steadman, ‘Old Age and contemptus mundi in The Pardoner’s Tale’, MA 33 (1964):121-30, takes the Old Man to stand for Old Age and further associates him with wisdom. I would have applauded an argument in favour of the Old Man as a symbol of contemptus mundi itself, which is much more apposite. For an overview of Old Man interpretations, cf Alfred David, ‘Criticism and the Old Man in Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale’, CE (1965-6): 39-44.

416 | The Pardoner’s Double Sermon that a man man may nat alway doon as he wolde.”/The same Seint Paul, after his grete penaunce in water and in lond, - in water by nyght and by day in greet peril and in greet peyne; in lond, in famyne and thurst, in coold and cloothlees, and ones stoned almoost to the deeth,/ yet seyde he, “Allas, I caytyf man! Who shal delivere me fro the prisoun of my caytyf body?” ParsT, 342-43]… For, as seith Seint Gregorie, “To wrecche caytyves shal be deeth withoute deeth, and ende withoute ende, and defaute withoute failynge./For hir deeth shal alwey lyven, and hir ende shal everemo begynne, and hir defaute shal nat faille.”/And therfore seith Seint John the Evaungelist: “They shullen folwe deeth, and they shul nat fynde hym; and they shul desiren to dye, and deeth shal flee fro hem”. [ParsT, 214-16]

As we cannot fail to note, the Old Man likens himself to a “restelees kaityf” and is evidently in this state of death without death. The passage just cited29 is part of a discussion in the Parson’s prima pars Penitentie of those suffering in hell under the “shadwe of deeth”. This shadow of death is not death but like death, only infinitely more terrible since it is never-ending. In other words, the Old Man stands to signify something here in the nature of death as damnation. Exegetically, the Old Man is the vetus homo, which, as Miller has shown, means that he is an image of unredeemed Adam and stands for Oldness – the sinful and mortal state of man that resulted from his commission of original sin and its transmission through the ages until the advent of Christ. This state is one of being unredeemed by Christ’s grace. Oldness thus approximates damnation, which supports my present interpretation of the Old Man. Spearing’s objection that this makes him an evil figure and that this “is not at all how he is actually represented in the Tale”30 may be countered by the observation that he seeks salvation through “his moodres gate” instead of casting his hopes on heaven. In fact, to read the Old Man’s attempts to be admitted to “the ground, which is my moodres gate” as a paraphrase of a death wish or, more literally, a burial wish may be missing Chaucer’s point. What is dubious about such an interpretation is Chaucer’s use of gate. A gate is not a place of rest but of transition and firmly fixed in the Christian mind as either opening up to heaven or to hell. Thus the Old Man may well be referring to some form of the “apocryphal legend which tells how Satan, before his exclusion from Heaven, married Iniquity” and 29 30

The “caytyf” reference has also been pointed out by Pearsall, p 363. Spearing, p 39.

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spawned Death, a frequent theme in thirteenth-century French sermons, so that his desire to return to his mother reveals him as a figure of evil after all.31 As it turns out, rather surprisingly (and suggestively), it is John Gower who provides the key to this aspect. His Mirour de l’omme describes how after his fall the Devil brought forth a daughter, Sin, upon whom he begot Death, whose incestuous intermarrying with Sin resulted in the Seven Deadly Vices. Underlying Gower’s conception is James 1:15, which says that “when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth Sin: and Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death”.32 Again, there is a marked correlation with Chaucer: this is the basic plot for what happens to the rioters as the outcome of their lust for death. This reaffirms the deadly nature of the Old Man but at the same time reveals him as a personification of Sin – both concepts that go together well with the vetus homo. Gower’s mythology offers yet another key to the Old Man in the person of Temptation. In Gower, this is someone who has been sent by the Devil and his progeny as a Messenger to Man, inviting him to the Devil’s council with a proposition that will be greatly to his advantage. Man comes, “but before his coming Death [has] been cunningly hidden away in an inner chamber, so that Man might not see him and be dismayed”.33 Needless to say, temptation is just an aspect of sin and as a notion provides no new insights. What is interesting is the figure of a messenger leading Man – the rioters, in our case – to a place where, cleverly concealed, Death lies in wait. This gives us another very suggestive association with Gower. This does not conclude our Gower options, for the Old Man can even be read as a gloss on Gower himself, as senex amans and vetus homo, whose writings on love – judged superficially – represent the “croked wey” and who after his dismissal by Venus, as the “leeve mooder” who will not let him in, must now discard his “oldness” and go in search of the “newness” of God’s caritas, which is the observable situation in the Confessio Amantis. At the same time, it is impossible not to see the Old Man as vanitas. He is an emblem of the evanescence of all earthly matters, a combination of Mortality and Time. The way his flesh, skin and blood fade away is a clear indication of mortality but at the same time of a 31

Owst, Preaching, p 93. Macaulay, vol i, p xlix. Fisher, p 164. 33 Macaulay, vol i, p xlix. 32

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condition that cannot be sloughed off and laid to rest until the onset of eternity and immortality when the Day of Judgement has come to pass. As an object lesson to the rioters who shall soon be reduced to a similar state of rattling bones he is a walking version of the adage “Know Thyself”, the classical reminder of our own mortal status.34 The Old Man’s saturnine speech also points strongly in the direction of Time. In Chaucer’s day the icon of Time was astrologically associated with Saturn, who stands for everything gloomy, such as old age, abject poverty and death, and is also the causal force of floods, famine and all other sort of disaster. He was conceived of as a surly and sickly old man, one of whose attributes is a crutch or a stick, signifying extreme old age and decay. Among other things, he is Death’s procurer – a function that is easily related to the Old Man. As such, he is also the Revealer of Truth – veritas filia temporis.35 In all this we recognize the Old Man and the path that he points out to the rioters. Worth noting is the observable congruency of the Pardoner’s Tale and the Wife of Bath’s Tale on this point. The Wife’s Loathly Lady, too, is a figure of vanitas, of Death and Time combined and whose nature is underlined by the horological and evanescent “ladyes foure and twenty, and yet mo”. She even mutters words about oldness that derive from the same biblical text as the Old Man’s. She is one who similarly directs the protagonist of her tale to his ultimate lot. They represent basically identical constructs, a point perhaps amplified by the observation that it is perfectly possible to effect a switch of terminology here and speak of the Loathly Fellow and the Old Woman (strangely, there is no corresponding negative male equivalent for “hag” or “crone” in the English language). Note also Larry Scanlon, who, quite innocent of this, typifies the Old Man as speaking “from the accumulated experiental authority of old age”,36 which is as good a summing-up of the Wife of Bath and the opening lines of her Prologue as anyone could wish for. 34

A good discussion of the combined characteristics of oldness, vice, mortality and transience is found in Phillips, p 154. “Chaucer’s ambiguous presentation may also reflect that worldliness [as exhibited by the rioters] involves, itself, many of the concepts suggested above”, which are various shades of “physical death, death of the soul and morals”. Like me, she feels that the Old Man is Death fitted out with a range of attributes to suggest some of the many forms under which we think to recognize it. 35 Cf Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939; New York: Harper & Row, 1962), Chapter 3, passim. 36 Scanlon, p 203.

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Like his female counterpart, the Old Man also incorporates a remedial side. His meekness and his desire for a penitential shirt (“heyre clowt”) link up perfectly well with the penitential part of the Parson’s Tale to which his words appear to refer. Christopher Dean’s interpretation of the Old Man as a salvational and remedial counterpoint to the rioters’ headlong quest for damnation fits in well, too. As a symbol of Damnation he is an implicit warning to the rioters that their quest should be directed toward salvation.37 In this connection, it also ought to be pointed out that the Old Man’s staff and shirt are most of all emblematical of the penitential pilgrim. These were well-understood accoutrements of sinners in search of salvation, both actual and iconographical, nor unfamiliar to the actual experience of those living in the calamitous fourteenth century. Besides, what else is man in a scriptural sense but a pilgrim in his Oldness in search of New Life? This reveals the Old Man as the personification of the human pilgrimage, encompassing the Pardoner, the Parson (who is also fitted out with a staff!), the other pilgrims and, ultimately, all of us. Thus, we have come close to Alfred David’s observation that the Old Man also expresses “the other side of the Pardoner’s nature, the terible weariness of carrying his burden of sin” – a valuable insight, though we had better replace nature by condition.38 While this is evidently correct in terms of a remedial implication, it may be even more to the point to note that he is first of all an externalization of the Pardoner himself, accoutred as a penitential pilgrim, who seeks to direct his audience to damnation rather than to a state of grace – a perfect summary, if there ever was one, of the Pardoner’s role in the Canterbury Tales. Thus, he stands for Oldness, damnation and, to borrow an insight applied to the Pardoner but not to the Old Man, the embodiment of vice.39 Conversely, what we may also recognize in the Old Man is a reflection of Holy Church, though the symbolical gender seems all wrong. As a penitential figure, old and meek and active until the end of time, and carrying a staff that may be a symbol of the Church’s pastoral role, he appears on the rioters’ path to point the way and what he points out, the treasure trove, is similarly reminiscent of 37

Christopher Dean, ‘Salvation, Damnation, and the Role of the Old Man in the Pardoner’s Tale’, ChauR 3 (1968-69): 44-49. 38 David, p 201. 39 Peterson: 326-36. Peterson’s idea largely agrees with my Seven Sins argument. I have been so bold here as to apply her insight to the Old Man as well.

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what the Church is custodian of, the Treasury of Grace. Roger Ellis’s notion that he is an emblem of faithfulness is something that comes close to this.40 Note, by the way, how on one level the Wife’s Loathly Lady is likewise reminiscent of the Church. Ultimately, this identification implies that somehow the Old Man also represents the Almighty himself, and what a fitting identification this is. As Psalm 23 reminds us, he is the one whose rod and staff will comfort the righteous, who need not fear evil, though they “walk through the valley of the shadow of death”. Here we have the unrighteous in the selfsame valley discomforted by the man with the staff and punished by the rod of their own evil. Similarly, his words on respect for the hoary head, which are God’s own and spoken to Moses when laying down his commandments, point in this direction: In Hooly Writ ye may yourself wel rede: Agayns an oold man, hoor upon his heed, Ye sholde arise… [PardT, 742-44]

As we know, this refers to Leviticus 19:32, which says “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of an old man, and fear thy God: I am the LORD”. Though the final eight words here represent a divine “I have spoken”, they are easily misunderstood. One suspects that they constitute a base text for medieval representations of God as a white-haired and white-bearded old man and that this is how Chaucer seeks to apply the Old Man’s words. Besides this, the text is a plain message that the hoary head is directly to be associated with the fear of God, indicating here that the rioters have arrived at a fearsome place. Not surprisingly, the Wife of Bath’s parallel construct, the Loathly Lady, refers to the same text in her discussion of gentilesse as natural virtue, thus confirming, as noted before, that we are dealing here with a closely related conception. Naturally, engaged as they are in an unholy quest, the rioters are deaf to his warning and, herded towards their doom (for the Old Man is of course also a shepherd in various Christian senses, ranging from pastor to the Lord himself), fail to make a safe passage through the valley. Before continuing, we may note how well the Parson’s speech on the “shadwe of deeth” also applies to the rioters. When he says that 40

Roger Ellis, Patterns of Religious Narrative in the Canterbury Tales (London: Croom Helm, 1986), esp 229-270 (Chapter 9).

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the damned “shullen folwe deeth, and they shul nat fynde hym”, this could well be the very inspiration for Chaucer’s account of how the revellers come across the Old Man and fail to recognize him as the death that they are looking for, just as they subsequently come across the treasure and fail to recognize its true nature. The “shadow of death” aspect is something that pervades the entire exemplum, in much the same way that the witches’ theme of “fair and foul” pervades Macbeth. In this connection, we should also realize that, like Shakespeare’s witches, the Old Man serves as an externalization of the protagonists’ spiritual condition (and the narrator’s), which is directed towards perdition.41 He is their contritional counterpart, their counterimage, his search being a matter of spiritual resignation rather than any physically active attempt to quell Death. Worthy of further note is the cryptic, almost ritualistic exchange of words between the rioters and the Old Man: Question: “Why artow al forwrapped save thy face?/ Why lyvestow so longe in so greet age?” Response: “For I kan nat fynde/ A man, though that I walked into Ynde,/ Neither in citee ne in village/ That wolde chaunge his youthe for myn age”.

This is riddling language. Rephrasing this, we read “What is al forwrapped save its face/And lyveth longe into greet age?” and “What man, fro here unto Ynde, in citee or in village,/Wolde chaunge youthe for age?” Phrased this way they are easily answered. Death or Old Father Time is the evident answer to the first riddle, for either appears to us in the shape of a shrouded figure and has been with us from the very first and will continue to be so until Judgement Day – something that is in full accord with what we have found on the nature of the Old Man. The other riddle is a bit harder to read on first sight, but once we transpose youth and age by newness and oldness the answer suggests itself: it is Christ or, within this context, Christ redeeming us through conquering Death, Christ making all things new. Thus what the Old 41

In this connection Miller identifies the young boy who informs the rioters about Death’s activities as the true novus homo. I doubt this identification. Aquinas, citing St Paul, “compares the state of a man under the Old Law to that of a child under a pedagogue; but the state under New Law, to that of a full grown man, who is no longer under a pedagogue”. Stanley Parry ed., St. Thomas Aquinas (Chicago: Regnery, 1949), p 22. With his remark about being taught by his “dame” [PardT, 684], the boy is plainly one who is “under a pedagogue” and consequently not a novus homo.

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Man is really saying is that he cannot find redemption through Christ, once again a remark that is most appropriate if we take him to stand for Vanitas, which, combining evanescent Mortality and Time, is a manifest symbol of being earth-bound rather than Heaven-directed. Returning to the Pardoner’s Tale we should note that one of the revellers “soothly” identifies the Old Man as one of Death’s henchmen and even goes so far as to refer to him as a “false theef”, an accolade in which we recognize Death itself in the light of earlier epithets that the Pardoner uses, namely “false traytour” and “privee theef”.42 Lacking newness, the Old Man, here representing the revellers’ spiritual condition, does not warn them off but instead directs them to their doom. “If that yow be so leef to finde Deeth, turne up this croked wey”. The croked wey, Miller points out, is the biblical path to death and damnation. The Old Man’s hurry to be away from them for what seems to be described as an appointment (“I moot go thither as I have to go”) confirms the Samarrah analogy. His directions lead them straight to a tree, in a grove where, as he states, he left Death without any desire to leave or hide himself. The tree is of course another symbol of death, as well as the spiritual re-birth that is beyond the rioters’ ken, referring at the same time to the fatal tree of paradise, the cross of Christ and the tree of penitence that the Parson dwells upon at some length [110-127]. What the rioters find is a treasure trove “of floryns fyne of gold ycoyned rounde wel ny an eighte busshels” and of course it stands for cupiditas, with which we are familiar as the root of all evil (as symbolized by the tree at whose roots they find their hoard) and which is deadly as a snare proffering worldly treasure and thus blinding the spirit to the true treasure of Heaven bought by Christ’s blood. It is no surprise therefore to hear the worst of the revellers refer to their find as “grace”, reminding us of the Wife who in her quest for fresh husbands exhibits a similar blindness when using the word in the same sense.43 Once the treasure – another manifestation of Death – has been found the Tale moves swiftly to its end. Death is truly found. It makes its appearance as death premeditated, when the revellers plot one an42 Cf Miller: 234-40, who makes a similar observation: “Significantly, the revellers refer to him a spy of Death, an ally of Death, and he is dressed in a shroud – ‘al forwrapped’ save his face: for the vetus homo represents the state of spiritual death”. 43 Miller: 234-40; See also the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, lines 553-54: “What wiste I wher my grace/ Was shapen for to be, and in what place?”

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other’s death, death in the shape of poison, death as the murder of the third reveller who gets killed by the other two, death as a self-inflicted (and very Chaucerian) quid pro quo when his murderers drink the poisoned wine and die the spiritual death which is implied by the unholy eucharist that they partake in accordingly. Their wine gets transsubstantiated into Death.44 With this the Pardoner has come to the end of his Tale. His unrelenting emphasis on death of all kinds has effectively turned his exemplum into a dark and moving horror story with numerous echoes of the pestilences so familiar to his hearers. Briefly repeating the main doctrinal points of his sermon in ringing anaphoric o’s (“O cursed synne of all cursednesse! O traytours homycide, O wikkednesse! O glotonye, luxurie, and hasardrye!”) the Pardoner now comes up with his sample application, which is the business of convincing the “goode men” and “wyves” to buy his pardons or offer goods in exchange. “The men and women mentioned in [these] lines are part of the imaginary congregation,” Robinson explains and so they are, as the words of line 915 show where he returns to the pilgrimage’s here and now: “And lo, sires, thus I preche”.45 In saying this the Pardoner has also daringly reminded the others of his original promise and his greedy trade. He is now quite close to where he wants to be. He then adds the coda: And Jhesu Crist, that is oure soules leche, So graunte yow his pardoun to receyve, For that is best; I wol yow nat deceyve. [PardT, 916-18]

For the duration of these three lines, in order to provide the proper finishing touch, the Pardoner slips back into the sample sermon mode, addressing his imaginary audience in a tone of apparent sincerity. Technically, there can be no doubt that it is to them that he is speaking, as it is the sample sermon which he concludes here. His next line, “But, sires, o word forgat I...”, confirms this: it is at this point that he redirects his attention to his present company. No sudden par44

On the subject of the eucharist, cf Benson, p 908, note 538-39; Martin Stevens and Kathleen Falvey, ‘Substance, Accident and Transformations: A Reading of the Pardoner’s Tale’, ChauR 17, (1982): 142-58; Rodney Delasanta, ‘Sacrament and Sacrifice in the Pardoner’s Tale’, AM 14 (1973): 43-53. This links up very closely with the annual duty of taking the eucharist at Easter, something that we must assume the pilgrims to be heading for. 45 Robinson, p 732, note 915.

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oxysm of his better nature, these three lines past, as Kittredge felt,46 but simply the hypocritical note on which he is wont to end and a demonstration of the hubris which impels him onward. While this effectively completes the sample sermon, obviously the coda is also directed at the Canterbury pilgrims, even though their sermon’s application is still to come. On the present level of his sermon it functions as the final bit of bait that the Pardoner uses to hook his audience. And an efficient hook it is, since it has landed him even such a big fish as the eminent Kittredge. This is quite understandable. As we know, there is good evidence that in his original draft Chaucer did allow the Pardoner to get his hooks into at least one of the pilgrims and make a successful sell, then changed his mind as a result of Gower’s challenge and rewrote the ending without any great attention to detail, which would explain much. The device of adding a second moralitas is something that we have explored in Chapter Four, to find that what happens here is a close parallel to Chaucer’s addition of his Envoy to the Clerk’s Tale. The second application is essentially a repetition of the offertorial part that the Pardoner preaches in the sample sermon, adorned with some additional trappings, such as his relics – briefly mentioned, though quite important – and his powers of absolution. The difference is that it is now the Canterbury pilgrims who are his target. The more the Pardoner says here, the more he seems to swell. His pardons were given him by the Pope himself, his customers should kneel down before him and meekly accept his pardons, and he is their “suretee”, insurance, for a happy demise “whan that the soule shal fro the body passe” in any accident that may befall them. He has attained almost Godlike proportions and the desired culmination of his brand of maistrie seems within reach. What is needed is just one sale to demonstrate that he can bewitch any audience, before bowing out with another “lo, sires, thus I preche”. As Curry says, “to hypnotize the Pilgrims into buying relics after he has declared their worthlessness and his own perfidy, would constitute the crown46

G.L. Kittredge, Chaucer and his Poetry, p 217. Cf Robinson, p 732 note 915; Benson, p 906. Surprisingly, in the light of the Pardoner’s self-exposed perfidy, there has been a wild variety of interpretation of what motivates him to try and sell his fake relics at this point. Robert Kilburn Root (The Poetry of Chaucer, p 231) goes so far as to interpret the situation as one in which the Pardoner, “on a vacation”, is halfheartedly going through his wonted motions.

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ing success of his career”.47 Or perhaps just a recognition on the pilgrims’ part on how well they have been fooled might have served. We shall never know. Pride comes before a fall, and the truth of the proverb has seldom been better applied, for this turns out to be the moment when Chaucer lets him make his fatal error. It is not so much the mention of money that touches off the violent conclusion of the Pardoner’s Tale, for the sum involved is a groat, a silver coin of no exceptional value. What has happened is that he has outperformed himself. His sermon has been so effective that any given group of listeners would have been deeply impressed and seriously moved, a consideration that still applies to Chaucer’s modern readership at a remove of six centuries. The Tavern Sins seem directed straight at several of his fellow-pilgrims: there are drinkers, gamblers and swearers galore among them. Several other passages allow themselves to be read as signs with no great difficulty, such as his reference to any “womman, be she yong or old/That hath ymaad hir housbonde cokewold” or the “wyves” who are asked to offer their wool. So, in terms of human psychology, several among the Canterbury company of pilgrims may be thought of as shakily apprehensive of where the Pardoner’s shaft will land. As it is, the Host proves to be the target. Being a sharp listener, as we know from his interruption in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the Pardoner has evidently and correctly identified the Host as the great swearer of them all. The Host’s introduction to the Pardoner’s sermon is riddled with oaths and it is entirely in line with the Pardoner’s character that this is what was on his mind when he said that he “moot thynke/Upon some honest thyng while that I drynke”. Chaucer’s conception of the Host as an inveterate swearer and the “alestake” setting for the Pardoner to warm up for his tale are easily linked to his inclusion of the Sins of the Tavern, a consideration that has the added virtue of explaining why the poor Host is singled out as the victim. A major point involved here – or perhaps the major point – is the all too easily forgotten fact that the Host is a taverner and as such a stock figure of vice and the devil’s henchman in stoking up all kinds of tavern-related sin. Thus, the phrase “moost envoluped in synne” as applied to the Host is not just a bolt from the blue. The situation is reminiscent once again of the Wife of Bath: like her, the Pardoner is satisfied to let his audience believe 47

Curry, Medieval Sciences, p 67.

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that his message is to the company and thence the world at large, whereas he actually has one specific individual in mind.48 The Host, in requiring the Pardoner to provide “som myrthe or japes”, gets paid along familiar quitting lines. In the end, he of all people is the Pardoner’s butt for precisely such entertainment, which makes the subsequent reversal of roles a really sublime variation of Chaucer’s favourite signature. Yet – and this is where much of the critics’ perplexity with the situation comes in – let us note that in no way this is typical of the Pardoner’s practice of spitting out his venom under the hue of holiness. His association with the Host has not been a hostile one and the Host on his part goes so far as to call him “bel ami”. When therefore the Pardoner calls upon him to come forward and be absolved at the price of one groat, we can only suppose that, from the Pardoner’s perspective, the situation is intended to be tongue-in-cheek. There is a good deal of double entendre to be recognized when he is invited to kiss the Pardoner’s “relikes everichon” and to unbuckle his “purs”, which – together with the pun on “ronyon” – is the evident reason why the infuriated Host strikes back so brutally against the Pardoner’s manhood. There is also a good deal of jocularity involved when the Host is blown up into the person “moost envoluped in synne”, is addressed alternately with great respect as “sire” and the next moment as “thou”, and the enormity of his sins is measured out to equal just one groat. I have given much thought to the subsequent passage. The Host’s outburst is so utterly damning and judgemental that one is inclined to regard it as the sentence pronounced by one of Chaucer’s mouthpieces. While its precise assignation does not detract substantially from this study’s general argument, I have ultimately chosen to present it under the sense of the Pardoner’s Tale. The reason is that the Pardoner’s fall is an obvious matter of “judgement here”, as Macbeth has it, and of “instructions, which being taught, return/To plague th’inventor”. The entire drive of the Pardoner’s sermon has been directed towards the here and now and it is there that the Host’s reaction similarly belongs. All the Pardoner’s efforts are tailored to demonstrate his superiority over his fellow-pilgrims and it is therefore fitting that it is at the hands of one of these that he gets his comeuppance. The sentence, on the other hand, is a question of “the life to 48

Marc Glasser, ‘The Pardoner and the Host: Chaucer’s Analysis of the Canterbury Game’, CEA Critic 46 (1983-84): 37-45.

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come”, whereby all is weighed in terms of eternal salvation or damnation – a different matter altogether. Damning though the Host’s censure is, there is an ultimate Judge whose sentence far surpasses his. By the time the Pardoner has finished the Host, a man of simple tastes, easily moved to sentiment and no great understander, sees red. He is not the type to appreciate the joke and fails to see that the Pardoner is letting him off lightly. What he understands is that he has been singled out as sinner in chief, that his manhood has been called into question and that he is asked to grovel before the Pardoner and be made a fool of. “By Seint Ronyan” – as a master of scabrous oaths, he has not failed to recognize the Pardoner’s pun – he is not going to made the laughing stock of the entire party. He’ll teach him something on the subject of “relikes”! The Host’s attack on the Pardoner’s “coillons” is clearly coinspired by the Pardoner’s mimicking of his oaths. Ronyan is the saint that the Host swears by and the Pardoner, in the Introduction to the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, has made fun of this evident garbling of some proper saint’s name by turning the name into ronyon, or runnion, another name for testicle. With Chaucer’s pilgrims, slights and other personal offences are never forgotten but require retaliation. This is Chaucer once again applying one of his favourite techniques.49 The very violence of the Host’s explosion is suggestive of a mixture of apprehension and outrage. A man of surfaces and little self-reflection, the Host – as the pilgrims’ referee – has accounted himself safe and now suddenly the ground opens up before him. Also, we probably ought to read him as the sort of person to have been moved profoundly by the sermon, and the Pardoner’s abrupt volte face has roughly undeceived him, showing him how thoroughly he has been tricked by this scoundrel. He realizes himself to be the Pardoner’s dupe here and to have been so throughout the entire telling of the Tale. It is clear that the Pardoner has overreached himself. He has miscalculated the effect of his sermon and his subsequent eye-opener speech. The Host’s retaliation is swift, brutal and agonizingly below the belt. He verbally emasculates the Pardoner in a mere ten lines and strips him of all his pretensions, to the great amusement of the others. The Pardoner’s professed technique of making his audience “soore to 49 Tupper, in Robinson, p 728 note 310. James Sledd, in ‘Canterbury Tales, C310, 320: “By Seint Ronyan”’, MS 13 (1951): 226-33, identifies Ronyan as a likely corruption of Ninian. I am not convinced.

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repente” is now turned against him with devastating effect. The bit about kissing the Pardoner’s old breeches as a saint’s relic, “though it were with thy fundement depeint” is both effective and scabrously funny, the more so when we remember that among the more prized relics to be seen in Canterbury were St Thomas’ filthy hair breeches.50 But this just a prelude, for now he moves in for the kill and, ironically, it is the Pardoner’s sneer about St Ronyon and runnions and the kissing of his “relikes everichon” that provides its inspiration: But, by the croys which that Seint Eleyne fond, I wolde I hadde thy coillons [testicles] in myn hond In stide of relikes or of seintuarie. Lat kutte hem of, I wol thee helpe hem carie; They shul be shrined in an hogges toord! [PardT, 951-55]

The Host’s contempt for the Pardoner and his “relics” is crushing. They are all excrement, he says, and his suggestion to cut off the Pardoner’s testicles and carry them around while enshrined in a hog’s turd is such barbarous humour that the abject Pardoner almost becomes a pitiable figure. Of course, this is twenty-first-century mellowness. It is unlikely that Chaucer entertained any such feelings for this creation of his. Anyway, the Host has had ample provocation, his anger runs deep indeed and he plainly is a bit of a bully anyway. When the Host strips away the last vestiges of the Pardoner’s dignity by proposing the making of a really perfect fake relic involving the latter’s cojones and the excremental surroundings worthy of them, he is of course rubbing the Pardoner’s nose in his own general worthlessness. The Host’s words are essentially a ten-line obscenity, a perfect piece of irony in the light of the Pardoner’s extensive preaching against such blasphemy.51 They are wonderfully fitting for a character so given to swearing graphically, whose sole object it is to pound the Pardoner into oblivion and very successfully so, for the Pardoner is left speechless with anger and is ultimately humiliated into being compelled to kiss pax with him. Much of this is the Pardoner on the integumental level. The sense literally comes in when the Host comes to his senses and re50

Helen Cooper, The Canterbury Tales (Oxford Guides to Chaucer: Oxford: OUP, 1989), p 271; David Knapp, ‘The Relyk of a Seint: A Gloss on Chaucer’s Pilgrimage’, ELH 39 (1972): 1-26. 51 Tristam, p 71.

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alizes what utter asses the Pardoner has made of them and of himself in particular. Like other offenders, the Pardoner gets paid in kind, embarrassingly so. He gets hung by his own bootstraps, for he is brought down effectively by his own fake “relikes” and “seintuarie”. The Host’s proposal to cut off his “coillons” and enshrine them in pigs’ excrement is more than just a nasty imprecation. There are at least two implications here without whose recognition we stand to miss out on the better part of the joke. To begin with, we should note that theologically – and theology is what we are dealing with when talking about relics and “seintuarie” – a pig is an unclean animal and its excrement its uncleanest product. Keeping in mind that enshrining involved the use of precious materials, as an earthly reflection of the relic’s holiness, we realize that the “hogges toord” as the proper substance in which to enshrine the Pardoner’s coillons is a statement on their super-excremental status as well as their owner’s. The other point strikes even deeper and is, plainly, what the Host’s crushing assault is all about – the Pardoner’s manhood: “relikes everichon”. The Host’s depiction of his testicles enshrined in a pig’s turd is his idea of the ultimate fake relic and directly, nastily, refers back to the earlier definition of the Pardoner as “a geldyng or a mare”. Whether one or the other, a eunuch or a homosexual, the idea is that he is not a man nor capable of producing a pair of manly testes. What he carries around are relics indeed, and this is why they are the perfect fake substitutes for the real thing in the fake reliquary so graphically outlined by the Host. They are the perfect bogus relic and as such provide the most damaging identification of the Pardoner imaginable. Having been savaged so pitilessly on a subject so impossible to defend, the Pardoner can only simmer and boil, remain speechless and allow the Host his victory. No other reading explains so well and so satisfactorily the way in which the Pardoner’s Tale ends. Needless to say, the squashing of the Pardoner also stands for the squashing of his maistrie notions and their confirmation through effecting a sale of some relic or pardon. He has truly, like the public whom he usually manipulates so masterfully, been made “soore to repente”. He has been mauled by a Host ready and willing to carry the emblems of his worthlessness about for all the world to see. No caveat emptor is needed here, for the nature of this piece of “seintuarie” is easily recognized from afar by its smell. Superiority has been turned into humiliation, the victim become victorious, the intended victor turned from

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a seller of fake relics into a fake relic for sale, and all his tricks of spiritual bullying nullified by a resounding verbal kick in a none too manly groin. The Pardoner’s fallen status is reflected in the laughter of the pilgrims –“al the peple lough” – and the humiliating kiss of peace which he is compelled to exchange with the Host. A nice bit of Chaucerian irony here and implicit commentary is the fact that the Knight, in commanding peace to be restored, addresses the Host politely with “ye” and “yow” despite the latter’s extensive four-letter word outburst, while the Pardoner ends up with a mere “thee”. How, indeed, the mighty are fallen... The Sentence of the Pardoner’s Sermon It is obvious from the moment when the Pardoner introduces his theme as Radix malorum est cupiditas that this cupidity is firmly lodged within his own breast. Of course, what he emphasizes there is this sin in its narrow sense, that of avarice as the stock-in-trade sin of rapacious pardoners and their kind. Yet, as we found when discussing the Pardoner’s confession in Chapter Six, what Chaucer really seems to be saying is that the Pardoner’s condition is typical of cupiditas in its wider Augustinian sense, which the good Parson alternately refers to as Concupiscence and Coveitise and which is synonymous with original sin. This cupiditas, when coupled with the Pardoner’s impenitent attitude and his entire lack of contrition, marks him as a soul lost to God, ruled by the Old Adam of the senses and the flesh. The point to be understood here is that the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale are dealt with differently by Chaucer than the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. Whereas the latter are so constructed that sense and sentence result in two distinct readings, this is not the case with the Pardoner. Here sense and sentence largely coalesce, and what distinguishes them is not their reading but the use to which they have been put. The sense is all about the Pardoner’s aborted attempt to hoodwink the pilgrims in general and the Host specifically. The sentence, on the other hand, focuses all attention on himself. It catches him in an act of overweening pride and presumption, which is bad enough, yet the full implication of his words is even more damning. It reveals a Luciferian character, well capable of moving sinners into the direction of Heaven, yet choosing pride and its inevitable fall in pre-

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ference to God’s command of obedience. This, we realize, exposes him as a seeker of death rather than spiritual re-birth. As Miller notes, “all should be seekers of Death, too – but the death of that Old Man, through whose burial Death is really conquered”.52 The Pardoner’s Prologue with its ready admission of the Pardoner’s own private cupidity, all the associated sins and the simonious uses to which he puts his preaching and sale of religious trash leave not the slightest doubt as to Chaucer’s sentence. His full embrace of cupiditas and rejection of caritas are a self-indictment, a graphic exposition of his spiritual state, that is more starkly drawn than that of the Wife of Bath and utterly damning in its eschatological implications. Of all the souls in the entire Canterbury fellowship, his is the one in the greatest want of grace. He is, to pick one voice among the many, the Old Man in his impenitent pursuit of Oldness.53 We realize that the brunt of the Pardoner’s preaching – his Tale – constitutes the proverbial boomerang. In preaching against the vice of cupiditas in order to satisfy his cupidity, he fails to apply its lesson to his own condition. It is something whose implication he does not wish to contemplate. His Prologue is outspoken about this in its several variations on his admission that “I preche of no thyng but for coveityse” [PardP, 424], but it is his Tale that pronounces judgement. This is under scored at its conclusion when he is decimated by the Host. Of course, as someone rooted firmly in the world, the Host is not in any sense Chaucer’s mouthpiece spelling out the sentence of the Pardoner’s preaching venture. All the same, it is difficult not to read his action as an indication – a sign – that even the least spiritual of pilgrims are capable of seeing him in his true colours. We ought to be careful here. What the Host does to the Pardoner in the end is perhaps best defined as applying the moralitas that results from the sense of the Pardoner’s sermon. This teaches us that the Pardoner is an execrable and excremental fraud from any angle. The sentence, on the other hand, spells out the condition of utter damnation and loss of redemption under which he labours. This is immediately clear when we take a good look at the rioters of his Tale. They are a manifest externalization of the Pardoner’s own condition – Chaucer having made it clear that we ought to see him as a tavern haunter and rioter. As pointed out before, they constitute an unholy 52 53

Miller : 234-40. Miller : 234-40.

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trinity, in good keeping with their unholy quest to conquer Death and the unholy eucharist that they partake in at the conclusion of the Tale. The nature of this trinity is made out to be Gluttony, Hasardry and Swearing and this works very well as far as the sense is concerned. A closer look reveals that, once the Sins of the Tavern are past, the opening stages of the tale proper indicate a notably different trio in the shape of the stages that rioters go through before setting out upon their quest to slay Death: Suggestion, Delight and Consent. We are familiar with these three as the basic stages that lead up to the actual commission of sin. This makes the rioters’ progress an image of the Pardoner’s own path to perdition, to end only among the roots of the tree of Evil where money flows instead of the grace which comes from the Cross as the tree of penitence. They are a reflection of how sin works within his own breast. What with the Pardoner’s Prologue being ample proof of his all-out sinfulness, no such demonstration ought to be required by his Tale. The Wife of Bath’s parallel case suggests no such handling of Chaucer’s material with the chief exception of the coda to her Tale. Yet as Eric Stockton finds, the Pardoner’s Tale boasts the presence of all the Seven Deadly Sins within its confines. The Tavern Sins, so appropriate to the Pardoner, are the most conspicuous ones. They are Gluttony, Gambling and Swearing. Though filed under Avarice in the Parson’s Tale, only Gambling does officially belong under this heading. Gluttony speaks for itself and Swearing is a major comes of Anger. These are the rioters’ stock sins. Yet “the deepest symbolic meaning of the Tale shows its three revelers guilty of superbia, pride in its most Satanic form”.54 Here, not surprisingly, we find repeated an observation that was also made with respect to the Pardoner’s Prologue and indeed all sin. What makes their pride so satanic is “their diabolical presumption: just as Satan wished to be second to none, so these three revelers presume, albeit unwittingly, to supplant Christ in His role of killing Death”. We may also turn to Stockton for the rest of the deadly Sins. The rioters’ other sins are: coveting money, association with loose women, wrath towards the Old Man, envy towards each other’s share of gold. They are tavern loafers [Sloth] and drunks, they swear, they lie and they murder. No need for any deeper inspection – all the Deadly Sins are there in the persons of the three rioters. 54

Stockton: 46.

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And what they show is clear: the three faces of the Pardoner. To put it differently, he is the three rioters, dominated by an encompassing sinfulness that springs from his ruling sin of Presumption, and like them, headed for a fate of eternal death and damnation.55 Essentially, this reaffirmation of the Pardoner’s sinfulness duplicates the Pardoner’s confession of sin in his Prologue. Such redundancy is rather surprising, since in the Wife of Bath’s parallel case no such thing is needed to produce a plain and convincing sentence. The explanation probably lies in Chaucer’s inclusion of the Sins of the Tavern, which account for most of the sins that Stockton notes, and links up naturally with our findings on the Tale’s genesis. When Chaucer rewote the Pardoner’s Tale into what we now call the sample sermon, he evidently meant to let it serve as it stands, because at this point he was still thinking of the Pardoner as the Wife of Bath’s confessor and had not yet come up with the notion of assigning a confession to him as well. His subsequent creation of the Wife of Bath’s confession and the homiletic function which he wove into it gave him new ideas for the Pardoner, whose Prologue he adapted along the same lines. One reason why this was done, apart from the evident effectiveness of such a confession, must have been Chaucer’s unmistakable desire to preserve the structural similarities that link the Wife and the Pardoner throughout, most probably because he saw them as a complementary package. The outcome of the rewriting was that the Pardoner could no longer be made to serve as confessor, yet his Tale’s points of departure for a discussion of sin were preserved intact, as they had been inextricably woven into the fabric of his sermon. A major point of Chaucerian irony here may rest in the parts played by the rioters, the Old Man and the Pardoner. What joins them is the fact that they are all quaestores, seekers, and what they are all looking for is Death. The rioters, as aspects of the Pardoner, and the Pardoner himself have no discrimination as to which is which and mix up substance and accident. As a quaestor in different sense, the Pardoner should have been aware of the true issues at hand. However, when he meets his alter ego in the shape of the saturnine Old Man, who incorporates all his options with respect to the life to come, there is no recognition on his part. Standing on the crossroads of eternal life

55

The interpretation here is mine, not Stockton’s.

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and death everlasting, the Pardoner turns out to be incapable of seeing himself for what he is and so proves to be incapable of self-correction. The Pardoner’s spiritual state is re-emphasized when he rejects the spiritual application – Christ’s pardon – in favour of the temporal “offertorie” of money and earthly goods to which he switches immediately after finishing his tale proper, in spite of the gruesome example that is provided by the rioters. Needless to say, this reveals his Adamite nature afresh: he is a picker of the fruit of cupiditas at the arbor malorum and it is by his “consentynge of resoun”, which – as the Parson informs us [336] – is Adam, and the “coveitise of hynesse by pride of herte” that he is led directly to his fall. In its turn, the Pardoner’s fallen state is reflected in his spiritual condition: he is headed for the “shadwe of deeth”, the ultimate and horrible fate of death everlasting, which is what Adam’s fall brought about for all mankind and seems to be exemplified by the Old Man. This is why at the very end of his Tale when the Host brutally turns the tables on him, wiping the superior smirk off his face by a thoroughly excremental dunking, the “old” motions of the Fall are repeated. The Pardoner’s desire for earthly treasure and his “hynesse by pride of herte” retrace Adam’s steps and consequently lead to his punishment, a descent into “vile and corrupt mateere” and what this stands for – death of body and soul. His situation at the end of his Tale, what with the “hogges toord” and his speechless anger, is reminiscent of the Parson’s words on the state of the damned in hell, whose “nose-thirles shullen be ful of stynkynge stynk; and, as seith Ysaye the prophete, ‘hir savoryng shal be ful of bitter galle’”[ParsT, 209]. In a very real sense, the Pardoner is in a worse state than Adam. In our reading, Adam, though old, also represents the innocence of mankind’s infancy and its subsequent loss. While physically young, the Pardoner, on the other hand, is much older. For Adam’s innocence, read the Pardoner’s experience. He literally has all the wisdom that Adam lacked at his beck and call, yet continues headlong on the road to perdition. Christ nor Bible, not even the Church or the very “ensamples” that he himself preaches can move the heart that is so totally given to pride. This deeply encrusted vetustas is rather reminiscent of the Oldest One of all, the Serpent in the Garden Himself, the Common Enemy of Man, familiarly known as Satan or the Devil. Upon consideration, this cannot be far off the mark. If we take the Parson as the opposite of the Pardoner and term him a “Christ-

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like” figure (which is what Miller does),56 this implies a satanic stature for the Pardoner. In human terms, the Pardoner is the closest that we get to a manifestion of His Satanic Majesty himself. I do not think or wish to suggest that the Pardoner is Satan but as a figure of mankind he gets entirely too close. Like the Serpent’s, his voice still promises his victims that they “shul been as goddes” and “shul nat dyen of deeth” so long as they are willing to bite, and goes so far as to imply that eternal life can be had for a groat. We may add to this the Pardoner’s glaring eyes, identified by Miller as hare-like lust. This may be correct, but let us also note that serpents, too, have glaring eyes.57 Then, the devils of medieval iconography are also widely given to sporting glaring eyes, as seen in scenes where they are engaged in transferring the damned to their ultimate place of unrest. This is no doubt so because the Devil himself is familiarly represented as a goat, an animal associated with both lust and glaring eyes. Need I point out that the Pardoner’s description in the General Prologue is most of all suggestive of such an animal, what with his lecherous pose, flaxen hair, goatish voice and glaring eyes. Worthy of note, too, is that many of the Pardoner’s sins, as identified in Chapter Six, liken him to the devil. Finally, there is the observation that he is actively and diabolically engaged in leading people away from the straight and narrow. If not the Tempter, he is at least one of his emissaries whose forked tongue continues to whisper words of Concupiscence in the ears of his hearers.

56

Miller: 241. Spearing, pp 22-23. See also Dolores L. Noll, ‘The Serpent and the Sting in the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale’, ChauR 17 (1982): 159-62. She points out the snakiness of the Pardoner and various serpent associations in his portrait. 57

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Conclusion In the course of these pages much argument has passed review in support of the basic premise of this study, namely that of a Gowerinspired new approach to the Canterbury Tales which finds its most brilliant expression in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and, scarcely less so, the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale and ultimately shades off into the Marriage Debate. It seems to me that this has worked out and that there is the outline here of a Testament of Love in the form of these latter two tales, within a framework that is introduced by the Man of Law and his Tale and made interpretable by the Parson’s Tale. In my final four chapters, the extreme Gowerian slant of all that is told by the Wife and the Pardoner, especially their all-out confession of the Seven Deadly Sins and preaching along typical sermon lines, leaves little doubt as to what Chaucer was doing or whence he drew his inspiration. The observation that in the case of the Wife and the Pardoner we are dealing with something quite out of the ordinary in terms of the Canterbury Tales as announced in the General Prologue is underscored by the unusually subtle organization of the prologues and tales which they tell as well as the fine intermeshing of their spiritual state, the messages which they and Chaucer seek to convey and, from a technical point of view, the indications of a closely-associated conception. They stand out and, in doing so, confirm that something special is the matter with them. This specialness is directly relatable to Gower: as we have seen, there are some thirty correspondences to bear this out and this is not counting the other occasional links with Gower that we find scattered about. This makes a non-Gowerian impetus a negligible option. Add to this the Gower-directed nature of both the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale and the Tale itself, the excellent possibility that the Sergeant/Man of Law is a caricature of Gower, and the evident part played by the Wife of Bath in the tale shifts that accompanied the inclusion of the Man of Law’s Tale. To my mind, the resulting picture simply spells Gower. To rephrase things, Gower’s influence here seems to me virtually inescapable and, by association, much the same must be claimed

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for the more general new plan and the debate that was sparked off by the Man of Law and Wife’s discussion of marriage. Together, they provide a significantly consistent explanation of a number of puzzling aspects of the Canterbury Tales, such as the new plan itself, the inclusion of the Parson’s Tale and the Retraction, the extensive Gowerorientation of the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, the remarkable parallelism of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale and the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale and their extensive correspondences with the Confessio Amantis, to limit ourselves to some of the more obvious points. Thus, at the end of the day, this study has made it a likely proposition that Gower influenced the Canterbury Tales in a fashion that has gone unappreciated until now. Here a final comprehensive sketch may be in order. At some time around 1386 Chaucer included his satirical portrait of the Sergeant of the Law in his General Prologue. This may have been based on the life-style and activities of his one-time friend John Gower or inspired by a royal suggestion of a courtly duel or perhaps both. Whether or not taking umbrage, Gower came up with an ostensibly pleasant but in point of fact disparaging “accolade” of his own in the first version of his Confessio Amantis (1390), which effectively challenged Chaucer to literary combat. From the evidence of Chaucer’s writings to follow we deduce that this was a duel wholeheartedly engaged in. He appears to have briefly experimented with a rewriting of the Legend of Good Women, which was the natural target and exhibits evidence of Chaucer attempting to use it as his answer, but soon decided in favour of the Canterbury Tales. Naturally, he picked the Sergeant of the Law as his vehicle for dealing with Gower. The Sergeant was fitted out with an Introduction which made clear that the Legend was no longer an option and, as Chaucer’s Gower puppet, demoted to a mere man of law, to be poked fun at by the various slips of learning and mangling of texts which he was caused to commit, presumably because they were typical of him. For the time being, he was permitted to keep the tale which was originally assigned to him (the Melibee, a rather pretentious and sententious tale well-suited to one whose “wordes weren so wise”, perhaps much like Chaucer himself to whom it was reassigned), but this was not to be for long. If this reconstruction should be regarded as rather conjectural, much less so the next steps that Chaucer took, for these are easily traced. He set about producing a plan capable of outdoing Gower on

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his own chosen ground. He had a hard look at the way the Confessio Amantis was composed and came up with the brilliant notion of a capsule Testament of Love. For this he required a Lover confessing to deadly sin, a Venus-like figure, a Priest preaching a remedial sermon, and a general framework of confession and the Seven Deadly Sins to put them in. The vehicles that he picked were the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, the Man of Law and the Parson. At the time, the Wife already told a tale condoning adultery, which is now the Shipman’s, with the Pardoner probably coming down against her with a briefer version of his present Tale. Chaucer’s reason for selecting these two is readily understood. They already possessed some of the basic ingredients. The Pardoner pronounced a loosely-constructed sermon on the wages of sin, or so I have argued, which was perfectly suited to serve as a demonstration of how Chaucer could outvoice Gower’s anticlerical protestations, while the Wife confessed to a married life marked by avarice. Both being already joined in a context of the one’s cupiditas being combated by the other’s, they were easily cast in the appropriately symbolic parts of impenitent Adam and Eve or, in more Gowerian terms, as an evil version of Genius and a combination of Venus, Amans and the courtly aspect of Genius respectively. The Parson, who played a different role in the original conception of the Canterbury Tales, was the first upon whom Chaucer went to work. Possibly remade to reflect the Priest’s good side, this new Parson was made to act as confessor to the entire Canterbury fellowship and direct them to their spiritual destination. Markedly Gowerian echoes in his portrait in the General Prologue support the idea that Chaucer went to work on the Parson as part of his response to the first redaction of the Confessio Amantis. Out of Peraldus, Pennaforte and other sources a new tale was composed for him, which as a manual of confession and a summa on sin, written in the vernacular, could be made to serve as a referential key. We find some of its material included in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and the Pardoner’s Tale, to the effective exclusion of all the other tales, and thus contributing pointers for his public as to their exegetical nature and an excellent technical indication for us that the Parson came first in the course of the Testament’s composition, to be immediately followed by the Wife and Pardoner. This is because it is a familiar and reliable fact in Chaucer – or at least something close to this – that elements from his latest translations tend to end up in the

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writings that come immediately after. The Retraction, which we always find inseparably linked to the Parson, apparently stems from the same time and likewise confirms the Testament association, especially if and when we accept the implication of the echo from the Legend’s Prologue that we came across in Chapter Two. All the same and at the risk of sounding contradictory, even if the Parson’s Tale was the first to be composed, I do not think that it was ever presented to a live audience like the other Testament tales. The reason for this is the nature of the tale. The idea that it would at any time have been recited to any sort of public, even an ecclesiastical audience, is not truly entertainable. It must have always been intended for a reading public, probably as a work of reference. Yet its possession of so many elements typical of the Confessio Amantis makes it impossible to deny its signalling function. To resolve this, let me say that in his presentation of the Testament of Love Chaucer may have expressly referred his public to the Parson’s Tale for further study in order to think over the import of his Testament at their leisure. He may even have cited some relevant chapter and verse. My own guess is that Chaucer would have felt it to be too unwieldy and forbidding for the Testament of Love at large. While adding it to the Tales with an eye to the new plan, which was effectuated soon after, he preferred to use the Man of Law’s tale of Custance as its stand-in in order to deal with the matter of remedial virtue in a narratively more manageable fashion. Next in line to be dealt with was the Pardoner. The basic idea here must have been a sermon which, mirroring the Confessio Amantis, involved all the Seven Deadly Sins. For this Chaucer picked the tale of the three rioters, which was already part of his original effort and, exemplifying how the wages of sin is death, already dealt with a number of sins. At this point the Sins of the Tavern were inserted. Their inclusion, directly referrable to the Parson’s Tale through their textual echoes (something not shared by the rest of the tale), added as an important sermon element the divisiones, which served to formalize the Pardoner’s originally loose sermon. Moreover, it added a variety of sins to the Tale that enables us to tally its total count of Deadly Sins at seven. Altogether, this spells the Pardoner’s “sample sermon” as Chaucer’s first attempt to adapt this tale to the demands of the Testament of Love. On the evidence of the Sins of the Tavern, several lines of which appear to refer to her, the quarrel with the Wife was still in force at this time. In point of fact, it seems eminently possible that, for

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a while, Chaucer should have considered casting the Wife of Bath as a confessant and the Pardoner as her confessor, which would explain both the length of her confession and the reworking of the Pardoner’s remedial exemplum so as to include all the Seven Deadly Sins. Also, the choice of Tavern Sins, presented as divisiones of cupiditas, hardly agrees with the latter sin and is plainly drawn from the Tale and its old moral of the wages of sin being death, with Pride rather than Covetousness as its point of departure. Needless to say, this supports the notion of a transitional stage in Chaucer’s remodelling efforts. When next we turn to the Wife of Bath, it is difficult to say which Chaucer thought of first, her confession or her new tale. Certainly, her original prologue and its discussion of avarice stand to have been a major reason for Chaucer to have lit upon her in order to comply with the confessional aspect of Gower’s challenge, yet it is also clear that the composition of her present Prologue can be properly understood only in conjunction with her Tale. It is here that Chaucer came up with his brilliant variation upon Gower, namely his fusion of confession and sermon elements as parts of a recognizable “modern university-type” sermon. This also shows us that Chaucer’s scenario for his Testament of Love was, or in time became, increasingly subtle and intricate. Both the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner, irrespective of their roles, are made to confess to all sort of variations of the Seven Deadly Sins and, at the same time, consciously (in the sense that Chaucer paints them as fictionally conscious manipulators) use their confession as part of a very realistic sermon. This suggests a sharp analysis on Chaucer’s part, which may well reflect his awareness that Amans, Venus and Genius are united alike as mouthpieces for one and the same preacher, John Gower. There could even be an implicit message here that all the latter’s preaching stands for nothing other than dilectio mundi. This is not to say that this necessarily represents Chaucer’s own feelings, even if we have come across indications that the Chaucer-Gower relationship may not have been as amical as Fisher wishes us to believe. After all, we are talking about what was probably a literary duel, a mock dispute aimed at pleasing their court audience, and there is nothing so effective, particularly in literature, as hitting one’s opponent below the belt. Adrenalin also tends to slip in. As for the Wife’s new tale, this was Chaucer’s own free reworking of Gower’s tale of Florent. Fundamentally, most if not all of their differences are related to the fact that

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she too was given a sermon to pronounce, with the Tale serving as its major exemplum, but that this sermon was dealt with in an entirely different fashion from what Gower sought to achieve. Chaucer’s experiments with the Wife of Bath were evidently so satisfactory that he returned to the Pardoner and outfitted him as well with an extensive confession in the shape of the Pardoner’s Prologue. It looks as if parts of the old prologue – such as elements of the old adulterous wife ploy – were preserved, but on the whole this was a new addition, adding not only a long list of sins for the Pardoner but new sermon elements as well, thus resulting in the sermon-within-asermon situation that we have closely looked into. Chaucer’s awareness of the intricacies here is borne out by his inclusion of an ironical parallel “sermonette” in the Wife’s Tale. This final rewriting of the Pardoner’s part was the outcome of the Pardoner’s preaching being dramatically altered to its present form. With the entire “sample sermon” turned into the Pardoner’s major exemplum, the addition of a second application was a natural consequence and, with the Pardoner himself turned into the ultimate villain of the pilgrimage, its damning nature was an equally natural consequence. And this final alteration presumably put an effective end to the old Wife-Pardoner quarrel and led to the parting of their literary ways that we are familiar with. The Wife of Bath’s and Pardoner’s confessions may be part of a capsule Testament of Love that echoes Gower’s treatment of the Seven Deadly sins, but there is nothing capsulized about their culpability on this subject. Perhaps the most desperate sinner of all, the Pardoner is outdone only by the sheer quantity of the Wife’s sins. The two of them present a monumental picture of how sin affects the person in whom it may work unrestrictedly. If this is clever, it is of course their sermonizing that spells Chaucer’s true achievement. The sermons are superb. They are brisk, saucy, lively, hugely captivating and true-to-life, and closely adhere to the requirements of late medieval sermon practice such as the prescribed several levels of understanding. Arguably, they are even truer to the various rules of good preaching than their contemporary sermons, for the obvious reason that they are the end product of one of the great masters of the English language at work and intent, at that, upon producing a set of wonderfully effective sermons in order to outperform his rival. In terms of Gower’s challenge, his achievement comes down to this: by cleverly employing Gower’s own love theme and underlying

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scheme of confession, Seven Deadly Sins and sermonizing he shows through the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner how sin truly affects men and women. Kinde as symbolized by Venus will war against reason and attempt to reverse God’s ordinatio by persistence in sin, which, as Satan promised in Paradise, would make humanity God-like. Thus, courtly love in the Wife’s hand becomes a mere excuse for licentiousness, for being serviced by feisty young men. And where it is not sexual cupidity that smoulders in the human breast, it is the other cupiditas – greed and temporal pride – that is the motivating force, of which the entire Paroner situation is an excellent example. It is also a great demonstration of Chaucer being able to rival Gower on the latter’s speciality of anti-clericalism. To complement the Wife and the Pardoner, there is Custance to demonstrate that only through virtuous forbearance and the fear of God it is possible for us to deal with this world and become worthy of gaining bliss in the next. Together these three spell Chaucer’s refutation, presumably ironical, of what he makes out to be the Confessio’s heterodoxy. Thus, what I am saying is that Chaucer’s resolution of the parts to be played by the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner is closely related to the matter of the Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale. The latter were already included in the early Canterbury Tales, probably first assigned to the Merchant and possibly used at an earlier date for a religious occasion. I have no idea of how swiftly Chaucer worked or could work when he put his heart in it. My guess is an interval of anything between a few weeks and as much as a year, the latter limit being plainly set by Gower’s second redaction of the Confessio Amantis. Apart from the somewhat thorny question why the well-fitting Melibee was shifted away from the Man of Law, which could be political, plainly the Man of Law’s Prologue and Tale are better suited to the Testament of Love, if only because the Tale is so evidently Gower-related. From a technical point of view, the tale is one of encompassing virtue, serving well to complement the vices of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner in full conformity with the demands of Gower’s challenge and thus providing the final element necessary for the capsule Testament, and possbily standing in for the Parson’s Tale. All the same, it lacks the marked sermon/confession/sin elements that are so typical of the tales that we have just been discussing. Thus, even if it precedes the Wife of Bath in the order of the Canterbury Tales in all the familiar arrangements, its inclusion as part of Chau-

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cer’s Testament of Love looks somewhat marginal. It is midway between the Testament and the new plan. Argued from a slightly different angle, as a late inclusion and in the light of its unfinished revision, it is not so much a tale that one would expect to have introduced the Testament as to have rounded it off. I should not be surprised if some of the considerations that led Chaucer to assign the tale to the Man of Law are that law represents the reson that is required to curb the amorality of kinde and that Custance’s virtue outdoes Dame Prudence as the ultimate in adherence to the laws of God. As the expounder of this lesson the Man of Law evidently functions here as the positive aspect of Genius the Priest, in contrast to the Pardoner. If to be taken as an image of Gower, he is made to demonstrate in propria persona what should have been the true message of his Confessio. What further appears to have happened is that at some time during or after the writing of the Testament of Love, Chaucer’s shifted his attention to the other opportunities that the Confessio and the inclusion of the Parson’s Tale afforded him. His practice of reassigning tales to new narrators, which would have been entirely unnecessary in a four-tale scheme, suggest that this was one consequence that he was aware of and embraced from the very first. After all, we find tales reassigned from the moment when the Testament of Love comes into play. Here was an opportunity to realign everything in terms of a spiritual pilgrimage, with tales of sin occasionally alternating with tales of virtue, to be concluded most fittingly at England’s nearest nexus to Heaven at the signal time of Easter and its annual requirement of confession. It enabled him to stick to lines that were still Gowerian but less conspicuously so, while doing away at the same time with his impossible target of eighty tales or more in favour of a more manageable thirty-plus tales and turn the entirety of the Canterbury Tales into a modified Testament of Love. This is something that we may also associate with the Retraction, which serves to draw the entire Canterbury Tales into the web of the testament that it constitutes. The unidirectional movement towards Canterbury, laid down as it is in the Parson’s Prologue, is therefore likely to be a later contribution, dating from the time of its inclusion as part of the new plan rather than being an original aspect of the Testament of Love, however faithfully it follows Gower’s linear narrative structure.

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After Chaucer’s considerable efforts on his Testament of Love it is rather disappointing to find that this brilliant threesome (foursome, if one wishes to include the Parson), as a demonstration of Chaucer dealing with Gower and apparently outperforming him, should have been scattered over the Canterbury Tales in their present fashion. Why were they given no prominence? Why was there no “thus I refute Gower”? In the places where these questions cropped up my answer has invariably been the same. The rewriting of the Wife of Bath and Pardoner ultimately resulted in a distinct narrative distance, which caused Chaucer to uncouple them; and that by this time his interest was taken by the possibilities of the new plan. While this seems correct, it is nonetheless a rather unsatisfactory explanation, as it is based not so much on causes as on the observable outcome. Let me therefore sketch the situation as I read it. I have been speaking of a “capsule” Testament of Love, but this may be slightly inaccurate, as it suggests a closeness and compactness that were not there in the Parson’s case. In all likelihood, his Tale, though an essential part of Chaucer’s reply, was never physically close to the other three. This is something that we have already had a good look at. Of course, he may have considered putting all the Testament tales at the end of the Canterbury Tales, but this is plainly unworkable and something that, as far as we can judge, was never put into effect for even a little while. The Parson’s Tale was there for the same reason that it is now – to provide the doctrinal and referential basis for Chaucer’s reply. It is also a very bookish piece of work, not something that he would have attempted to read out to any public, thus giving us a glimpse of the author leaving behind the stage of court performer and becoming a writer in the modern sense. Quite possibly, its actual inclusion postdates the successful conclusion of the Testament. This is well in tune with the conclusive note of his other testament, the Retraction, which, one feels, Chaucer would not have inserted until he was well satisfied that he had come up with an answer to Gower. Certainly, his decision to continue on a moderately Gowerian footing in the shape of his new plan and its Marriage Debate may have contributed a major motive for its inclusion, even if we have no clear way of deciding whose conception came first, that of the new plan or the capsule Testament of Love. The other three tales, however, were presumably a closely-knit whole until well into his rewriting efforts, in which context we may repeat our old observation that Custance’s vir-

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tuousness functions well as a capsule resumé of the Parson’s discussion of the remedia of sin. When the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale was written, there was the Melibee to follow it and so presumably was the Wife’s old tale. When Chaucer first rewrote the Pardoner’s Tale the old quarrel with the Wife was still in force and remained so. It was not until he decided upon a totally new approach to the Wife of Bath and her old tale was passed on to the Shipman that the original order was broken up. The Man of Law’s Epilogue, which was the Wife’s old introduction at the same time, was uncoupled from her but not linked up with her new tale and, at roughly the same time, further uncoupled from the Man of Law when he was assigned the tale of Custance. The composition of the new Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale meant the effective end of the Wife-Pardoner quarrel, particularly once the Pardoner’s Prologue was added to his tale. I believe that the elimination of the Wife-Pardoner quarrel was a side-effect, perhaps unintended, of the progressive series of changes that Chaucer had made. Now this may have put him in a bit of a quandary. Here he was, with the two major tales of his Testament of Love satisfyingly completed yet no longer capable of functioning together as before. My original thought was that, with the Man of Law already unlinked from the Wife of Bath, at least temporarily, this caused Chaucer to realize that his scheme for the Testament had foundered, even if the operation itself had been a success. There is no sign of any narrative device that would have enabled him, at short notice, to keep the Pardoner and the Wife together and the consequence, at least for the time being, would have been to let them go their ways. However, this is probably too facile. What the evidence indicates is that a thoroughly deliberate effort was made to compose a Testament of Love, with the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner at its heart, and they are ample demonstration this was brilliantly executed. It is hardly credible that Chaucer could not have come up with some creative links to weld them together for a few reading occasions. Yet instead of using them to claim the winner’s laurels in the Canterbury Tales he appears to have rather rigorously dropped the entire enterprise altogether in favour of the much less antagonistic new plan. Now why should he have discarded such a demonstration of his ability to best Gower in so seemingly nonchalant a fashion? In part, this must be due to the ramifications of his inclusion of the Parson’s

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Tale, since this affected not just the other three tales but the Canterbury Tales as a whole. To put it differently, its presence is most likely to mark the conclusion of the capsule Testament, the court game, and the beginning of the new plan as a more toned-down continuation of some of Gower’s themes. If this seems to contradict our finding that the Parson’s Tale predates the Wife’s Prologue and Tale as well as the Pardoner’s, as borne out by their verbal echoes, let me repeat that their debt to to Parson shows that the composition of his tale predates theirs but tells us nothing about the moment of its inclusion. The situation also implies that the duel was at no time waged in real anger and that, after having dealt with it, Chaucer had no problem with letting the entirety of the Canterbury Tales, as his ultimate Testament of Love, serve as a monument to Gower. We concluded earlier that the composition of the basic Testament of Love, the duelling tales, must have been finished at around mid-1391 at the latest. As for its context, my preferred interpretation, expressed several times in the course of this study, is that the entire challenge and Chaucer’s reaction was part and parcel of a court game, a mock literary battle that was not unlike the later Scottish practice of flyting. More subtle and courtly than this and requiring a year at most for Chaucer to come up with his riposte, it would have been over as soon as his Testament of Love had been presented to his court audience in one or more sessions. For the dating of its presentation, I have adhered throughout this study to mid-1390 as its earliest possible moment. This is the date of the first version of the Confessio, where we find the first indications of a duel. Mid-1391 is the ultimate date for the second version of the Confessio, which leaves out all reference to Chaucer and thus represents the latest moment for his answer. My own stated preference is for Easter 1391. What seems to argue against all this and suggests that we should pick an even earlier date is his presumable portrayal of Gower as the Sergeant of the Law, which is well-suited to such a court game but stands to predate the 1390 Confessio Amantis by at least three years. Perhaps John Fisher’s suspicion that Chaucer and Gower were both invited by the royals, during a boating party, to write their rival works is correct after all. If so, it is a small step to accept that this may have been an invitation to a battle of writing wits, which in Chaucer’s case resulted in some sleight of hand involving both the Canterbury Tales and the Legend of Good Women.

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All the same, other interpretations are possible, too. It may have been Chaucer’s disillusionment with Gower as expressed in the Sergeant of the Law’s portrait in the General Prologue, rather than any royal command, that provided an excellent point of departure for those courtiers intent on some literary sport to link this to Gower’s subsequent completion of the Confessio. Alternatively, his dissatisfaction with the portrayal that he was given as the Sergeant of the Law, which is a plausible reaction to assume, would have left him wide open to voices suggesting that he should get back at Chaucer. And, finally, given the domestic situation, political factors may have played their part, even if this cannot have been the 1392 London extortion affair. The notion of a court game and particularly its passing is a consideration which helps to explain why there is so little victorious chest beating to be discerned in spite of the marked fashion in which Gower was put paid to. True, as we have seen, there is something of a refutation and a moral victory in the Loathly Lady’s speech in the Wife’s Tale, which so effectively demolishes Gower’s pretensions to gentilesse, if Gower it was who was put in his place. But here, too, the question arises why it is so toned-down. No doubt, its courtly nature is part of the answer but the passing of a pretended quarrel is as good an explanation, or better, of many of the little and not so little things that have puzzled us throughout this study. Once Chaucer’s response had been presented, which we ought to picture in terms of readings to an appreciative audience, and the game was over, there were still the Canterbury Tales as a whole to be considered: business as usual. Whether or not his relation with Gower was restored, the work itself required a proper reassimilation of the Testament tales into the overall structure. After all, having used the Tales as a vehicle for his response, he had seriously affected the composition as it had been. One supposes that he would have wished to resume work on his Canterbury Tales along the new linear design which he owed to the inclusion of the Parson’s Tale, and hence to Gower, without letting the Testament tales continue to stand out as something separate from the rest. The result was that he sought to incorporate the Man of Law, the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner in separate places, and thus efface the traces – or at least the major ones – of any Chaucer-Gower quyting match. Accordingly, the Pardoner ended up in Group C and it is an attractive thought that this rearrangement may also have involved the Man of Law’s reinstalment in the Sergeant of the Law’s old place.

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The absence of any truly identifiable reference to Gower, even in such natural places as the General Prologue and the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, may point in the direction of Chaucer eliminating the traces of his duel. It is true that the Scottish flyting contests sometimes also fail to be specific on the exact name of the opponent, but this is often remedied by some play on the name involved – something that is absent here. As we are dealing here with a literary duel predating any flyting by at least a century, this ought not to mean much: the rules of the game here are set by Chaucer and Gower, not by any Scottish poets, and the game is basically a courtly one. Yet play there is, even if this fails to identify Gower outright, but instead of name puns it is all about his activities, pet interests and professional appearance. In this context, it is further worth noting that the sketch of the Sergeant of the Law in the General Prologue wants the physiognomic detail that we find in most of the other completed portraits, which could well indicate a post-challenge intervention which removed some of the more strikingly personal elements. At the same time, there is an inference to be made here that their relation was never so fearsome as their posturing implied and Chaucer was quite willing, if only for old time’s sake, to let Gower off lightly in the book that was to be his great gift to posterity. I strongly feel that, like Gower, Chaucer was seeking to make his mark upon literature through his Canterbury Tales and attain the desired status of auctoritee. The contrast with Gower here is striking in a most ironical fashion, particularly in terms of a lasting readership response. While Chaucer’s interests ranged far and wide, attesting to a great universality of mind, he appears to have been satisfied with making his mark upon the English literary scene. Gower, on the other hand, is frequently limited by the insularity of his writing, much of which deals with conditions at home, yet appears to have aspired to a wider recognition by choosing to write in French, Latin and English. Chaucer’s literary ambitions alone would have been sufficient reason for him to cease petty hostilities and see how the Testament might now be refitted into the narrative order of the Canterbury Tales, which, by this time, had become something markedly different from the original concept and, as its post-1391 continuation shows, distinctly Gower-oriented in its discussion of marriage as well as deadly sin. In other words, what this study may have unearthed is the coming and going of a brief court entertainment, whose effectuation took

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something close to one year, during which time Chaucer used part of the Canterbury Tales to put Gower in his place. After the game was over, he resumed normal work on them and reincorporated the Testament tales into the larger effort at hand, something that also provides a good reason why the Fragment II and its introductory passage should be so fraught with all sort of revisional elements. In the process, he may well have removed all direct reference to Gower, while deferring the rewriting of other details to the final revision that he presumably had in mind. The implication of all this is that there is a good chance that the entire Testament of Love as we have come to know it in the pages past is not so much to be read by us as a covert attack on Gower but constitutes the passing of an overt one, dismantled and redistributed over the Canterbury Tales. This would explain, in a single package, why the references to Gower are never explicit, why it is that so much revision is wanting in and around the Fragment II and why it is this section that requires revision in the first place. Something comparable is encountered in the Legend of Good Women. If we solely had the G-Prologue at our disposal, the notion that it could somehow be involved with the Daisy/Marguerite cult would be tenuous at best. Yet clearly this is a situation that Chaucer was seeking to achieve, though not at all cost or through any rigorous elimination. In point of fact, the way in which the Legend and the Testament of Love are dealt with is close enough to suggest that in either case reference to the original court game was removed in such a way as to leave faint traces only, possibly as a wink at the public who, at one time, had been so intimately engaged. Now as the Wife of Bath constitutes the crucial element of the Testament of Love, a clever inspiration would have been to continue along the way already taken by the Man of Law and the Wife in debating marriage in terms of sin and grace, especially as Gower’s Priest also comes down in favour of marriage as a reflection of the supremacy of resoun over kinde. This choice is one that Chaucer demonstrably made, as his presumable reinclusion of the Man of Law in the Sergeant’s old place and the continuation of the subsequent Marriage Debate show. It seems to me, therefore, that Chaucer was ultimately working towards a Canterbury Tales as a Testament of Love along the mellower and more down-toned lines of the new plan which we discussed in Chapter One.

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What we have just dealt with here also agrees very well with Gower’s reaction or, rather, the absence of one. Gower dropping his address to Chaucer in the later versions of the Confessio and the absence of any attempt to return to the subject are easily understood in terms of the passing of the game. In fact, it looks like the most plausible explanation around. Other, lesser options are pique, which is hardly a likely reaction for so public a personality, and old age, which is contradicted by Gower’s continued writing. His silence is understandable, too, for at the end of the day he was as much a winner as Chaucer. True, he could not hope to compete with his rival’s genius and sheer gift for language but his achievement is nevertheless almost equal to these: he singlehandly caused Chaucer to turn the Canterbury Tales into a work whose altered structure and increased moral content are signally indebted to himself. If the Canterbury Tales are an improved version of the Confessio, they owe this to his influence and, implicitly, confirm his status as an auctoritee for Chaucer As I am writing this, I realize that throughout this book I have axiomatically singled out Chaucer as the winner. But was he? If court contest there was, who sat in judgement in order to decide the issue? The virtuosity of what he did with the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner leave no doubt in my mind that Chaucer surpassed Gower here in no mean fashion. He is my winner. Yet contests are frequently presided over by judges who see matters differently and decide on grounds that need not reflect the public’s taste. If there was such a thing as a game court, whether presided over by Richard and Anne or others, it may well have judged things according to a set of rules which need not have taken too much account of any brilliancy of execution. Morality may have been an important yardstick and there may have been further rules set for the duel. But rules can be broken. Chaucer may have done so by switching from the Legend to the Canterbury Tales. On the moral side, Gower certainly reflects the climate of the fin de siècle better than Chaucer and could thus well have been adjudged the winner, if this were the main criterion. Or there could have been a draw – who is to say? The ultimate winner of course was Gower because his challenge led to a greatly Gowerized Canterbury Tales – or was it Chaucer because the result was some of his finest writing? Perhaps the fairest summary is that there simply were no losers here. As it is, our exploration of the Testament of Love and the later new plan in which it resulted, runs counter to a good deal of Chaucer

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criticism on the Parson and the Wife of Bath in particular. The Parson’s Tale has never been much liked. It has often been seen as too restrictively orthodox to represent the feelings of a man like Chaucer, whom we like for his wit and apparent auctorial mildness in contrast to the unimaginative drone of the Parson’s discussion of sin. To a degree, such reserve is not without foundation. We have no indication of Chaucer as a hell-fire fundamentalist in his writings, so what are we to do with such a traditionalist piece of scholastic misanthropism? There is no gainsaying his profound interest in religious matters, as shown by his borrowings and translations of all sort of religious tracts that to many of us (though presumably not to most of his contemporaries) are as tedious as most of what the Parson tells us. On the whole, these give us a man well in tune with his times and perhaps even a bit of a progressive. His many religious translations, such as De contemptu mundi or De miseria condicionis humane and of course his Parson’s Tale, point to a marked interest in making religious thought and debate available in the vernacular. While this does not make him a Lollard, it nevertheless reveals him as sympathetic to some of the Lollard aims, such as making the language of religion more widely accessible. In this light, the Parson’s Tale is not the gloomy piece that we take it for, but a public-spirited attempt to bring salvation closer to his audience and, in view of the icy wind blowing from the time of Henry IV’s accession, a rather dangerous one at that. Nor does the presence of the Parson’s Tale at the end of the Canterbury Tales put any undue strain on the various narrations. In fact, coming as it does at the very conclusion of everything, it also postpones one’s judgement to the very last, as any good and final judgement should. In Chapter One it was proposed that it signalled a virtue-vice reading. So far as I can judge, this still holds good: they are all of them aligned or alignable according to virtue and vice, chiefly vice, but often in so subtle a fashion (as, for instance, shown by the exegetical references to Canticles in the Miller’s Tale) that they escape the general modern reader. It is true that the Parson’s Tale is unlike any of the other tales. In fact, it is not really a tale but a tract, a work of spiritual reference. While brimful with eschatological meaning, as a forewarning of the ultimate truth of the Last Judgement when the stern and just Judge shall preside over all, it nevertheless seldom judges but presents a medium through which one may come up with an educated judgement of one’s own. If, in Chapter One, we spoke of

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key and cornerstone, an equally good definition would be that of register. Keys and cornerstones may be suggestive of further things to come, such as doors to be opened and buildings to be erected. A register is a reasonably neutral thing that refers backward, even if there has always been someone to decide on its inclusions and exclusions. This is exactly what the Parson’s Tale is: an ultimate register to enable everyone to check and decide for themselves what the tales are all about, and perhaps take a look at their own spiritual status as well. In the light of his debt to Peraldus, accounted to be a mere 2.5 per cent of the latter’s Summa, and his other borrowings, there is every reason to accept that Chaucer went about composing this register selectively and with a special eye to its inclusion in the Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath is a case apart, as part of the problems that we have with her are not so much due to Chaucer but to modern reader response. It is often assumed, without any great argument or foundation, that the Wife of Bath speaks for Chaucer and that her views on a married woman’s rights represent his own. As we have seen, even a sensible editor like Robinson puts his foot into this trap. For the sake of clarity, therefore, let me state here that it seems to me a historical impossibility that Chaucer should have been an avant-garde feminist in any modern sense of the word. Living as he did in a man’s world which, save in terms of courtly pretence and worship of the Virgin and female saints, looked down upon women, how can this fourteenthcentury author at all be a precursor of the women’s liberation movement of the twentieth century? As his other writings show, Chaucer was perfectly willing to comply with courtly fashions but this is no basis for assuming that he ever was a feminist in the sense that he could, should or would have championed women’s rights. If the Wife of Bath’s voice is one that demands all sorts of liberty, this is placed in such a context that we can only conclude that it was meant to illustrate the contrariness of women and was hardly in the way of favourable comment. Anyone reading the Wife’s Prologue with an open mind must conclude that neither Chaucer nor she advocates any women’s rights. The Wife’s protests and railing are not directed at obtaining anything so abstract or, indeed, altruistic. Everything that she does is self-serving and what she is after is a life of licence and nothing else. Nor, for all his brilliance, could Chaucer ever have been ahead of his times by the six centuries that are so easily dismissed by his

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feminist interpreters or gone so deeply against the grain of his own times. Women’s equality has been a long-fought battle and an upperclass one at that, much of the time. It was not fought, then (if at all) or in the early twentieth century, for the likes of the Wife of Bath. The absurdity of a feminist Chaucer is easily shown by a simple consideration of his audience. It would have been quite all right for him to have played up to the court ladies attending his readings (who would have quickly understood that a vulgarian like the Wife was no lady and in no way their representative). Yet within the masculinist and religious context of his times it can only have been his implicit condemn-tion of the Wife that counted at the end of the day. Her extreme and impenitent culpability with respect to the Deadly Sins is not condoned by Chaucer, whose various translations and moral tales reveal a religious man. Instead, as we see in the Clerk’s Envoy, it is something that he comes down against, even if this is veiled in irony. The problem is that, even though the Wife’s portrait is satirical throughout, she attains such life-like proportions that she draws us into a web of identification that was probably never intended by her creator. While this is not meant to detract in any way from the liveliness of the Wife’s picture in her Prologue and her magisterial performance, the essential correctness of this analysis is underscored by our findings on the Pardoner, whom we may remember as our serendipitous control. In the past chapters, these two pilgrims have been subjected to a thorough going-over along identical lines. In the Pardoner’s case this has led to results which rarely diverge from the accepted picture that we have of his character, conduct or constitution. In fact, his perfidiousness has been shown up as perhaps even more insidious than ever before. Applying the same rules to the Wife of Bath, this study has come up with very similar results for her as well. What these show is that we have been dealing with very closely associated constructions and solutions which bear out one another’s findings. Their analysis underscores the fallacy of reading Chaucer as someone actively propounding positive feminist notions to a non-feminist world, when in point of fact he comes down against the Wife in a wide variety of ways culminating in the total condemnation that is implicit in her selfpronounced sentence. Just as the Pardoner is infinities away from speaking for Chaucer and no one in their right minds would ever argue in favour of reading him as such, so the Wife of Bath is not Chaucer’s

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spokeswoman by a million miles and cannot hope to come anywhere near to representing his true feelings, either. Naturally, everything that I have rehearsed here is just a rough sketch. In the course of things there have been all sort of interesting findings that I have here passed over. This holds good in particular for the subject of the Man of Law. His Tale and its links have turned out to be a near-inexhaustible source of insights into the compositional history of the Canterbury Tales. A supporting development, though not essential to my general thesis, has been the insight that the portrayal of the Man of Law, both in the General Prologue and in the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale, is likely to have been based or at least co-based upon John Gower. Equally important is the fact that the portrait which we derive from such a reading tallies well with all the inferences to be drawn from the Confessio Amantis and Gower’s other works. What they tell us is that Fisher paints a too rosy picture of both Gower and his relation with Chaucer. Macaulay, his predecessor as Gower’s first great editor, clearly despises Gower as a timeserver and political turncoat. This is a picture which Fisher seeks to redress, but his milder portrayal cannot hide Gower’s less attractive sides. On the whole, I feel that we should take up a position somewhere in the middle, with the firm understanding that Fisher’s notion of him and Chaucer having been long-standing friends is not so much fact as conjecture. In the course of writing this book there were some eye-opening moments. A surprising finding occurred when I tried to work out what the Host’s original response to the Wife of Bath ought to have been at the end of the Man of Law’s Epilogue. The lines that I had improvised for my own satisfaction turned out to be almost identical to the ones that the Pardoner speaks in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue in lines 18486, a fact that did not register until some time had passed. They may have been my subconscious at work, but they did produce a striking result. Still another surprise finding was the matter of the blocks of sin underlying the Wife of Bath’s Prologue. Setting out from the Pardoner’s Tavern Sins, it was not difficult to uncover the presence of such blocks, once I had the sense to check this out. I regard this happy find as an important piece of confirmation of my theory. Of particular interest was the matter of the Avarice block. It was easy enough to single out its first half as potentially having been the better part of the Wife’s old prologue, as this was something that I had done well before

456 | Conclusion

ever considering the possible existence of blocks of sin. Once the presence of a whole series of them had become obvious, the complementary half-block on Avarice was soon spotted. However, to find that one ended on “They were ful glad” and the other opened with the same half-line was truly a bit of a shock. A comparable situation cropped up in the Wife of Bath’s and Pardoner’s internal sermons. It had long been clear to me that the latter’s sample sermon was really a sermon within a sermon, but not until I sought to apply this knowledge as a control on the Wife did I recognize that hers, too, included something similar, even if this was in a different part of the proceedings. When things fall into place in this fashion, it is a natural reaction to feel that one is on the right track. Much the same feeling has sustained me during the development of the thesis that the Man of Law, like his predecessor the Sergeant, is a caricature of Gower. Once I allowed for the possibility and really looked into the subject, there turned out to be a wide range of perfectly good clues waiting to be fitted into the picture. This was a step not lightly taken, because John Fisher, who had considered the idea and was seconded here by Alfred David, felt that the portrait of the Sergeant of the Law was inconsistent with the notion of a legal Gower. While originally arguing, in the space of some three paragraphs, that the Man of Law could have been based on Gower, I had gone along with Fisher’s claim that the Sergeant was not, until the moment when I decided to have a new look at his portrait in the General Prologue. There is a chapter on this subject now. Still another point worth mentioning is the part that is played by the Parson’s Tale. Even now, there is considerable uncertainty among scholars about its construction and when this took place. My stance has been and must be still that it was composed with the Testament of Love in mind and that it had been completed by the time that the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner were assigned their present roles. The issue here is basically a simple one. We have come across convincing evidence that, unlike any of the other other tales, these two draw extensively on the Parson’s Tale, which we find in their confession of sin, in their occasional, literal repetition of the Parson’s words and in the blocks of sin that figure in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and the Pardoner’s Tale. There is further evidence that a substantial part of their composition cannot be attributed to Chaucer’s chief sources for the Parson’s Tale, the Peraldus-based Primo and Quoniam. We either de-

Conclusion | 457

cide that, in composing the prologues and tales for the present Wife of Bath and Pardoner, Chaucer fell back upon an already composed Parson’s Tale or choose in favour of his borrowing from several sources in the process. The attraction of the latter option rather pales in the face of the fact that there is a complete Parson’s Tale that combines both Peraldus and Chaucer’s other sources and was included about a decade before Chaucer’s death. It would certainly have been quite an ineffectual way for him to have gone about his business by failing to assemble the Parson’s Tale until his moment of greatest need for its contents had passed. This way of looking at the evidence is borne out by the swift decline of echoes from the Parson’s Tale once we move beyond the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath. As pointed out earlier, it is a typical aspect of Chaucer’s compositional method that during a brief period new tales tended to be seriously influenced by his most recent translations. The tales that he composed just after De miseria humane condicionis and the Epistola adversus Jovinianum are cases in point. The Pardoner’s Tale and the Wife of Bath’s Prologue (plus the Clerk’s Envoy) suggest the same thing with respect to the Parson’s Tale. Rather paradoxically, our inspection of the Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale and the genesis of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale has turned out to be much more intricate than might have been expected. It seems clear that the Introduction was written with the Testament of Love in mind, yet the prose tale that it announces, which we take to be the Melibee, is evidently not a new one but holds on to the Sergeant of the Law’s old tale as something appropriate to the Man of Law and the Testament of Love. At a date later than the writing of the Introduction and probably coinciding with his successful completion of the rest of his capsule Testament around mid-1391, Chaucer must have returned to the Man of Law in order to replace the Melibee by the much more Gowerian tale of Custance, in the process bypassing the need to erase the reference to a tale in prose. In this connection, it is worth noting that the various tale shifts that we have encountered are related, without exception, to Testament of Love matters and that the Man of Law figures prominently here. In the Pardoner’s case, something similar may be noted by way of a phased composition. Its rewriting appears to have gone through two stages, the first being when his old tale, as a presumably loosely constructed sermon, was tightened up along the lines of a “modern

458 | Conclusion

university type” sermon and made to include all the Deadly Sins, and the second when the present Prologue and second moralitas were added to it, which resulted in the sermon within a sermon situation. In the Wife of Bath’s case, similar constructional phases have been proposed by Chaucer scholarship, this time with respect to her Prologue, though these fail to coincide with this study’s view of its development. What I have been trying to work out is how Chaucer’s reply to Gower was effectuated within the court or court-related situation in which the challenge came up in the first place. With Richard and Anne as its possible instigators, the audience involved was primarily an aural one rather than a reading public, even if there are hints throughout our discussion of Chaucer balancing on the edge of becoming a readers’ writer, particularly when we think of such products as the Parson’s Tale. The instalment idea which was mentioned in Chapter One does not sit too well with this, though I see no compelling reason to throw it overboard. Of course, one option can be disposed of swiftly. There were no Joycean tales in progress here. For Chaucer to have kept a court audience abreast of his various changes and reworkings would have driven everybody crazy. Thus the notion of instalments needs adapting, which I think ought to be along the following lines. If there were such things as serial readings, which sounds like a good and entertaining way to deal with the challenge, we must assume them not to have taken place until he was satisfied that everything was sufficently worked out and under control. The fact that several revisional aspects of the Testament of Love appear to contradict such a view is a serious point to consider. What we ought to realize is that our identification of the Testament of Love may have been severely limited by Chaucer’s own reconstructional efforts once the duel was past. If he truly undertook to efface its major traces, which seems a plausible idea (after all, something similar happened to the Legend of Good Women, whose Prologue was rewritten so as to eliminate practically all reference to the Daisy cult) we can only guess at the exact contours of the Testament as it was at the moment or moments when it was presented to his audience. Something to make us stop and think is the possibility that, in his presentation of the Testament, Chaucer may have sought – as both Gower and the Parson do – to deal extensively with sin before coming to its remedial aspects. Thus, at the time when the Testament of Love was delivered to Chaucer’s audience, the Man of Law and his Tale may well

Conclusion | 459

have come after the Wife of Bath and/or Pardoner rather than ahead of them. In fact, the precedence of the Man of Law’s Tale of exceeding virtue to the sin-packed accounts of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner is so unusual as to make it a likely thought that its present position postdates the culmination of the Testament of Love and reflects Chaucer’s subsequent effort to assign it to a more innocuous place. It is something that also agrees well with its presumably late inclusion, while narratively it provides the better fit as a commentary on the Wife of Bath in particular. It also provides a satisfying, or at least complementary, explanation why the old end-link to the Man of Law’s Tale was detached from the Wife of Bath. At the risk of repeating myself, a fine point to be made here is that this way of looking at things is underscored by the Confessio Amantis. If there was some court rule on matters such as these or simply a mutual understanding that after having fulfilled their parts they would both return to their writing at hand and throw out all overt signs of a literary duel, this would be a good explanation why John Gower should have eliminated his original challenge in the later versions and one that may well be an improvement on all other attempts to account for its disappearance. As pointed out before, the disappearance of Richard’s Anne and the most obvious references to the Daisy cult in the G-Prologue to the Legend of Good Women provide a good working model for what seems to have happened in the closely related instance of the Testament of Love. What almost entirely escapes us of course is the exact context within which all this would have been presented to Chaucer’s public. A rough approximation will have to do. It must have taken place roughly within a year after Gower’s challenge, preferably less, It can hardly fail to have included the Introduction of the Man of Law’s Tale, whose lack of revision marks it as a largely intact leftover from the duel. How exactly Chaucer went about presenting his material as his answer to Gower, what oratorical and other devices he may have used to link them together into an effective whole, who sat in judgement – on these points we can only speculate. Depending on how close or distant the Parson’s role was, Wife/Man of LawPardoner/Parson is an acceptable order of tales, though I much prefer Wife/Pardoner followed by Man of Law, even if this is largely guesswork. What this also means – and a very natural thing to find it is – is that none of these tales or their prologues simply popped into being at

460 | Conclusion

the drop of a hat. Chaucer’s way with words and tales here is the obvious outcome of a good deal of fitting, adapting and polishing before he was sufficiently satisfied to let matters go for the time being. In point of fact, I think that we may safely say that Chaucer was finicky about his tales. There is ample evidence that he was unwilling to include anything, borrowed or otherwise, until he had had a chance to adapt it to his liking. Something similar may be said for what he threw out. Whenever possible, this was re-used in different contexts. The striking thing here is the contrast with his negligent approach to revision (or, rather, its absence) that we have come across in the course of this study, but on this point we are probably deceived by appearances. The revisional situation is probably not so much evidence of a careless attitude but a conscious choice. Why revise any text extensively, when new additions – and there were still quite a few to come, as the General Prologue suggests – might seriously disrupt the effort? Such a way of dealing with the tales makes excellent sense, particularly when we call to mind Chaucer’s frugality. What I am referring to is his evident dislike of discarding pieces of text that could possibly be saved or reused. Instances of this are the Midas passage in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, the first moralitas of the Pardoner’s sermon, the Man of Law’s Prologue and, perhaps best of all, the Man of Law’s Epilogue with its Host clashing with the proto-Parson, something that is later echoed in the Host-Pardoner fray. Holding on to these is arguably more sensible than throwing them out altogether when one does not know what tomorrow will bring. Paradoxically, it is precisely these aspects of the writing of the Canterbury Tales – the lack of a detailed revision and the retention of doubtful passages – that allow us a wealth of insights into the growth of the book which we would never have had otherwise. They are such a wonderful mine of information that, given a chance to choose between a seamlessly complete version of the Canterbury Tales and the one that we possess, it may well be the imperfect one that many of us would prefer.

Reference Note Abbreviations AM Archiv CE ChauR ELH JEGP JGN M&H n.s. MA MLN MLQ MLR MP MR MS MSE NM NQ PLL PMLA SAC SMC Spec SP SR TLS TSE TSL TSLL

Annuale Mediaevale Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen College English Chaucer Review English Literary History Journal of English and Germanic Philology John Gower Newsletter Medievalia et Humanistica, new series Medium Aevum Modern Language Notes Modern Language Quarterly Modern Language Review Modern Philology Minnesota Review Mediaeval Studies Massachusetts Studies in English Neuphilologische Mitteilungen Notes and Queries Papers on Language and Literature Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Studies in the Age of Chaucer Studies in Medieval Culture Speculum Studies in Philology Southern Review Times Literary Supplement Tulane Studies in English Tennessee Studies in Literature Texas Studies in Literature and Language

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Register Names Aarne/Thompson, 209, 211-14 Adam Scriveyn, see Pynkhurst Apuleius, 210-213, 215 Arundel, Thomas, 40n, 70 Augustine, St, 156, 234, 236, 246, 277, 320-21, 325, 374, 390, 399400, 430 Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, 35-37 Boccaccio, 12n, 29, 64, 67, 76n -Decamerone, 29, 67 -De claris mulieribus, 76n Brembre, Nicholas, 39, 41, 53, 112 Chaucer, -career, 35-42 -portraits, 35, 42-44, 117 -public, 35-45, 148 -tales shared with Gower, 45-47, 193221 Delasanta, Rodney, 6n, 8n, 68, 89-93, 139n, 140, 423n Deschamps, Eugene, 17, 121 Edward III, 39, 113-14, 128-30 Gaunt, see John of Gaunt Gower, -as a legally trained person, 125-29 -Cinkante balades, 125, 134 -Cronica tripertita, 37, 112n -Education of a King, 84-85, 118, 125, 132, 145, 237; also see Fürstenspiegel -Mirour de l’omme, 66, 125-26, 129, 134-35, 142n, 149, 152, 417 -‘moral Gower’, 38, 50, 60, 70, 13738, 142, 207 -redactions of the Confessio Amantis, 2, 45-46, 48, 53-54, 85, 108-13, 116, 120, 192-93, 438 -tale of Florent, see Florent

-version of Custance, 79-83, 93, 197, 331 -Vox clamantis, 38-39, 113, 114n, 129, 132, 142n, 204n -words to Chaucer, 50-52 Henry of Derby, see Henry IV Henry of Lancaster, see Henry IV Henry IV, 15, 17, 36-42, 44, 45n, 5354, 83, 85, 110-113, 118-19, 131, 138, 204, 215, 224, 452 Hoccleve, Thomas, 39, 43 Innocent III, see De Miseria Humane Condicionis Jerome, St, 168, 174, 184, 291, 293, 314, 337, 347, 391; also see Epistola John of Gaunt, 17, 35-38, 53, 110, 112, 118-19 Koeppel, Emil, 230n, 244, 247, 25255, 314-17 Lydgate, John, 55 Manly (/Rickert), 13-20, 27-28, 98n, 178, 321-22, 395-96 Ovid -Epistolae, see Heroides -Heroides, 55, 73-76, 80, 142 -Metamorphoses, 143-44 Pennaforte, 191, 240-41, 243, 439 Peraldus, 191, 238, 240-42, 253n, 439, 453, 456-57 Pynchbek, Thomas, 124-25 Pynkhurst, Adam, 13-17, 29, 35, 53, 89 Queen Anne, 36, 40, 54, 56, 76, 116, 224-25, 451, 458-59 Richard II, 36-38, 40-41, 44, 45n, 5354, 60, 71, 85, 108-114, 117-19, 125, 131, 138, 204n, 215, 224, 451, 458-59 Robertson, 26, 246, 347, 370, 372-74, 414n Strode, Ralph, 38, 138 Swynford, Katherine, 35, 40, 118 Trevet, Nicholas, 49, 57, 80-83, 90, 93, 96, 197 Tupper, Frederick, 26-27, 88 Tyrwhitt, Thomas, 13, 57, 71

476 | Register Usk, Thomas, 39, 41, 52-53, 112-13, 117 -Testament of Love, 39, 52-53, 117 Other Aldington Septvauns, see Septvauns Anelida and Arcite, 93 Apius and Virginia, 46, 49 Apollonius of Tyre, 72, 74-79, 132, 140-42, 239, 277, 329n Arthurian elements, 171, 198-199, 202, 217-221, 354-55, 357, 378 Astrolabe, see Treatise Black Death, 69, 129-31, 138, 233, 342, 368, 413 Book of the Duchess, 35-37, 74 Bradshaw shift, 103, 164, 225 Canacee, 72, 74-81, 132, 140, 142, 329n Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue, 14-17, 21-22 Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, 14-17, 224 Clerk’s Envoy, see Lenvoy Clerk’s Prologue, 150 Clerk’s Tale, 25, 107, 150-51, 152n, 177, 179, 182, 191, 192n, 194, 223, 225, 231, 285-87, 402, 424 Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse, 15n, 36-37, 119, 139 Cook’s Tale, 5, 14-16, 19, 22, 60, 222 Court games, 41, 61-62, 109, 116-17, 120, 146, 447-50, 459 Courtly love, 47-48, 57-59, 63, 67, 150-51, 153-55, 198-99, 202, 20609, 330, 354-55, 357, 359, 385, 443 Daisy or Marguerite game, 41, 109110, 116-17, 120, 450, 458-59 De miseria humane condicionis, 82, 87, 90, 120-21, 147-49, 160, 174, 184, 192, 314, 318, 327-28, 335, 337, 452, 457 Ellesmere MS, 13-19, 31, 43, 89, 98, 178 Epistola adversus Jovinianum, 12022, 159, 168, 174, 184, 192, 223, 251-52, 292-94, 314, 318, 337, 347, 371, 374-76, 391, 457

Estates satire, 4, 13, 60, 68, 104-05, 123-39 Florent, 49, 152, 156-57, 193-221, 319, 441 Flyting, 61-62, 447, 449 Franklin’s Tale, 150, 223, 366 Fürstenspiegel, 84-85, 109, 125, 145, 229n, 237 Gamelyn, 16 Gentilesse, 97, 149, 152-53, 157-58, 162, 195, 198-99, 203-07, 232, 267, 271n, 320n, 334, 337-40, 360-65, 369, 375, 384-88, 405, 420, 448 Golden Ass, see Apuleius Hengwrt, 13-19, 89, 98, 178 Heroides, see Ovid Hyd, Absalon, 55, 74-79, 122 Knight’s Tale, 19, 148n, 222, 327 Lak of Stedfastnesse, 118 Legend of Good Women, 41, 52, 5460, 67, 73-80, 98, 109, 115, 120-21, 130n, 140n, 141-42, 144, 191, 319, 358, 438, 447, 450-51, 458 -Prologue(s) to the Legend of Good Women, 36, 41, 55-58, 64, 74, 76, 79, 109, 116-18, 120-22, 224n, 438, 450, 458-59 Lenvoy de Chaucer, 87, 157, 163, 177, 182, 190-91, 223, 231, 244, 247, 285-89, 381, 392, 424, 454, 457 Loathly lady, 97, 147, 159, 162-63, 172, 196-97, 201-02, 207-08, 21517, 271n, 281, 288, 335, 337-41, 358-66, 369, 375, 379-89, 391, 403, 418, 420, 448 Lollardry, 39, 104-06, 118, 452 Lords Appellant, 40-41, 112-13, 119, 204, 224 Maistrie, 85, 97, 150-52, 159, 163, 172, 195, 200, 208-09, 219, 246, 256-59, 267, 272, 282, 301, 336, 341, 344, 350-52, 355, 359-60, 362, 364, 368, 371, 375, 384, 386-89, 392, 408, 410, 424 Manciple’s Prologue, 21 Manciple’s Tale, 46, 49 Marriage Debate (Group), 27n, 46,

Register | 477 147-51, 159, 164, 166, 190, 223-24, 231, 285, 327, 369, 392, 437, 445, 449-50 Melibee, 5n, 25, 84-87, 96-97, 99, 102, 109, 115, 122, 144, 182, 222, 438, 443, 446, 457 Merchant of St Denis, 95, 99, 102, 172-74, 177, 191, 250; also see Shipman’s Tale Merchant’s Prologue, 150, 381 Merchant’s Tale, 150, 160, 182, 223, 327, 357, 366, 370, 392 Merciless Parliament, 53, 112 Midas, 172-73, 188, 198, 222, 355, 358, 460 Miller’s Tale, 19, 30, 234, 452 Modern university type sermon, 1, 155-56, 321-26, 331, 395-96, 400, 403, 440-41, 457-58 Monk’s Modern Instances, 183, 222 Monk’s Prologue, 182 Monk’s Tale, 76n, 92-93, 182-83, 222 Number of Canterbury pilgrims, 3, 27-32 Nun’s Priest’s Epilogue, 15 Nun’s Priest’s Prologue, 182 Nun’s Priest’s Tale, 224-25 Pardoner, -Ipocrisis Religiosa, 296-99 -old Prologue, 174-77 -old Tale, 174-77, 184-90 Pardoner-Shipman end-link, 178-83 Parliament of Fowls, 232, 234 Parson, -Epilogue Parson, 103-07 -portrayal, 103-06 -Prologue, 5-10, 12, 19, 21, 32-34 Patronage, 35-37 Peasants’ Revolt, 114, 204n, 224, 342 Pestilence, see Black Death Phebus and Coronis, 46, 49 Physician’s Tale, 46, 49, 56, 223 Plague, see Black Death Ploughman, 105-06 Prioress’ Tale, 77 Reeve’s Tale, 19, 234 Retraction, 5n, 11-12, 19-20, 24-25, 55, 59, 63-68, 80, 115, 122, 191,

233, 438, 440, 444-45 Roman de la Rose, 159, 327, 337, 351, 361, 371 Second Nun’s Prologue, 38, 224 Second Nun’s Tale, 25, 95, 224 Seintes Legende of Cupide, 73-74, 141; see also Legend of Good Women Senex amans, 47, 57, 63, 153-54, 158, 165, 366, 369-70, 417 Septvauns, 95, 126-27, 129, 133 Sergeant of the Law, 31, 83, 86, 98102, 104, 109, 123-46, 168, 207, 222-23, 437-38, 447-49, 456-57 Shipman’s Tale, 23, 32, 95, 99-103, 107, 124-25, 163, 169, 171-74, 17881, 189, 222, 439 Signs, 325-26, 410 Sins of the Tavern, 174-75, 184-86, 192, 222, 238, 300, 314, 317-18, 338, 395-97, 399n, 400n, 401, 40304, 411, 425, 432, 440-41, 455 Sir Thopas, 5n, 21-22, 132, 182, 223, 225 Sovranty of Erin, 214-15 Squire’s Tale, 5, 21, 98, 150, 223, 225, 369 Summoner’s Tale, 369 Treatise on the Astrolabe, 114-15, 121 Troilus and Criseyde, 35-38, 41-43, 46, 48, 50, 137, 327 Weddynge of Sir Gawen, 195n, 199, 200n, 203, 216-221 Wife of Bath, -old Prologue, 165-70 -old Tale, 170-174 -provenance of Wife of Bath’s Tale, 194-221