The question then becomes, what are we to make of these self-constructions? Where and how, if at all, does virtuoso performance intersect with reality? This seems to me the other significant achievement of the prologues of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner: They put the reader (or listener, if Chaucer ever read them aloud to his contemporaries) in the same position of trying to separate fact from fiction, or of discovering the psychological truths that lie beneath the most extravagant or self-delusory masquerades, which we experience in our social or professional interactions with our friends, acquaintances, superiors, colleagues, or subordinates.
It’s important to realize that in crafting their pilgrimage personae the Wife of Bath and Pardoner make use of readily available, dominant discourses, as they (and the other pilgrims) do in their tales. For example, the later, larger portion of the Wife’s prologue utilizes two major bodies of textuality—misogynist and misogamous—by which men have justified their continuing social and political hegemony over women. Classical, clerical, and popular literary strands intermingle in these discourses, and Chaucer, by putting these stereotypes in the Wife’s mouth, has seemed to some readers to be endorsing, however playfully, their points of view. At least as likely is the view of other critics that Alison, by constructing herself as a compendium of male fears about female sexuality and aggressiveness, is enjoying the paradoxical power that such discourses unintentionally grant their victims: the power to induce shock and anger by their overt, hyperbolical embrace, in word and deed, of the supposedly debilitating stereotypes. Chaucer suggests the success of this strategy by his depiction of the responses of male pilgrims (Friar, Clerk, Merchant, Franklin, perhaps Nun’s Priest) whose tales, or comments in links between tales, reveal their need to respond to, and dispute, the Wife’s outrageous claim to have achieved complete mastery over her five husbands (albeit, in the case of the last one, not without a fight).
The Pardoner’s strategy is similar. Faced with the knowledge that his physical features—high voice, lack of facial hair, glaring eyes—suggested to adherents of physiognomic analysis an absent or deviant sexuality (as witnessed by the narrator’s assessment in “The General Prologue”: “I trowe he were a gelding or a mare”; p. 36), he plays with, and seeks to provoke, his fellow pilgrims by singing “Com hider, love, to me” with the Summoner (suggesting what me dievals would have called a sodomitic relationship), but also claiming, when he interrupts the Wife of Bath, that he was about to marry, and then declaring, as proof of his villainy, that he will “have a joly wenche in every toun” (p. 490). That both the Pardoner’s appearance and his profession suggest an immoral character is underscored when the Host (who salutes him insolently as “thou bel amy”) asks him to “tel us som mirth or japes” (an off-color story), and there is an outcry from the pilgrims of upper rank—“Nay, lat him telle us of no ribaudye!”—who obviously fear the kind of filth such a man might be capable of uttering. As part of his strategy of exacerbating (and thus in a sense controlling) such negative reactions to him, the Pardoner implies that it will be a stretch for him to think of “som honest thing” to tell, and that he will need strong drink to help him!
The “honest thing” he chooses to tell in his tale is a hair-raising story of evil’s self-destructive nature, the quasi-allegorical quest for Death by three young scoundrels who start out on their “pilgrimage” from a tavern and end up killing each other over a cache of gold to which they are directed by an old man whom they meet (and verbally abuse) along the way. It’s fairly easy to see this story as the Pardoner’s tart comment on the pilgrimage that began at the Tabard and on some of his self-righteous detractors, who have treated him as the young wastrels treat the old man who responds by sending them to their death.
But before we get to this grisly tale, which demonstrates the Pardoner’s command of the exemplary stories so important to medieval preaching (especially that of the mendicants), the Pardoner performs a different kind of honesty (or fictitious honesty): an expose of the pulpit trickery by which he defrauds gullible congregations of their hard-earned money by hawking phony relics. He does not just reveal his hypocrisy—he preaches against greed, the very sin that motivates him—he revels in it: Although a sinner, he saves others by his preaching, but that is not his intention; as long as the money rolls in, its donors can go to hell for all he cares.
In crafting the Pardoner’s prologue, Chaucer synthesizes contemporary concerns about the fraudulent selling of pardons with two other areas of discontent: the traffic in false relics and the problem of sinful priests who do not practice what they preach. The last of these three abuses contributes most to the Pardoner’s melodramatic “confession” of his misdeeds, and it’s no surprise that Chaucer lifts the Pardoner’s description of his hypocritical preaching from an established discourse on the subject that circulated in late-medieval preaching manuals and treatises, which besides offering advice on effective preaching contained warnings that such preaching required of its practitioners a virtuous life, as well as discussions about whether a priest guilty of mortal sin should be allowed in the pulpit. That the poet should have converted the manuals’ warnings and condemnations into the self-description of a Canterbury Tales character can mean one of two things: Either Chaucer raided the discourse of the hypocritical preacher in order to give, in the Pardoner, an example of clerical villainy, or the Pardoner is himself fully conversant with the preaching manuals and from them has constructed two voices: one, that of the effective preacher (as shown in his tale); the other, that of the hypocritical, evil preacher (as shown in the prologue). By showing his mastery of both discourses, the Pardoner not only manages to upset and outrage his critics on the pilgrimage; he also makes a good case for winning the supper for the best tale. After all, he boasts that “my entente is nat but for to winne” (p. 488), which could refer not only to his quest for wealth, but also to the storytelling contest, and indeed to his ongoing battle against being physically and professionally stereotyped—or to all three.
The self-constructing performances of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner may represent the pinnacle of Chaucer’s art in The Canterbury Tales, but they share with many other moments in that incomplete collection of stories told on a pilgrimage that never reaches either of its announced goals—Becket’s shrine or Harry Bailly’s dinner table—a power to delight, engage, and mystify their readers that shows no sign of lessening more than 600 years after their author’s death.
Robert W. Hanning is Professor of English at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1961. He holds degrees from Columbia and Oxford Universities, and has also taught at Yale, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and New York University. Recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, he has published The Vision of History in Early Britain, The Individual in Twelfth-Century Romance, The Lais of Marie de France (co-translated with Joan Ferrante), and Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture (co-edited with David Rosand), as well as many articles on Chaucer’s poetry and other medieval and Renaissance subjects.
A Note on the Text and the Translation
The Middle English text of The Canterbury Tales used in this edition is that of W. W. Skeat (1835-1912), the great Victorian scholar of medieval English literature. Skeat’s editions of Chaucer’s complete works and of many other Old and Middle English texts, including Piers Plowman, by Chaucer’s contemporary, William Langland, established new standards of textual accuracy, thanks to the extensive study of medieval manuscripts on which they were based. A fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, Skeat was an indefatigable worker who played a major role in the Early English Text Society, the Philological Society, and the British Academy, and in the establishment of English language and literature as subjects of serious study at the university level. He also published a widely used Etymological Dictionary.
—Robert W. Hanning
The American scholar Jacques Barzun once wro
te that, unlike French written some 600 years ago, English of that era—that is, Chaucer’s English—is still comprehensible to the modern reader.
But while it is true that, as Barzun pointed out, the structure of the language is the same, then and now, and many of the words are the same, only the most studious and patient modern reader will get the meaning of every line in Chaucer’s Middle English. The spelling is different than ours, and in Chaucer every sixth or seventh word refers to something medieval and not in our modern vocabulary. The result is that, between stopping to sound out the differently spelled words and looking up those words in Chaucer that are no longer in use to day, it’s very slow going. In the process, we lose the poetry.
So for this modernization of Chaucer’s language, I’ve changed all the Middle English spellings to modern English and substituted, wherever possible, words or phrases we use today for those in Chaucer we no longer recognize. What I have not tried to do is make Chaucer sound like a modern man, using modern, idiomatic speech. Many of Chaucer’s lines are structured so that the key phrase or word—the word or phrase that reveals the meaning or outcome—is held back until the end of the line. To rearrange the parts of these lines would remove both the rhythmic and dramatic tension in the poetry. There is not much fun in knowing the end of the line—or story—ahead of time, especially if it has been turned from the silver or gold of rhyme and meter into a leaden paraphrase.
So what you have here, I hope, is still Chaucer, with all his brilliance, subtlety, and sense of drama, and as much of the rhythm and meter integral to it that I could conserve—but written in English readily comprehensible to the contemporary reader. I would like to think that, as you read along, enough of Chaucer’s tone and feel is still present that you lose yourself in the tale, hear Chaucer speaking directly to you, and forget that it is a translation.
—Peter Tuttle
Peter Tuttle’s most recent poetry is Looking for a Sign in the West, published by Back Shore in 2003.
The General Prologue
WHAN THAT APRILLE WITH his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages):
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
(And palmers for to seken straunge strondes)
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.
Bifel that, in that seson on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At night was come in-to that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a companye,
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle
In felawshipe, and pilgrims were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde;
The chambres and the stables weren wyde,
And wel we weren esed atte beste.
And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everichon,
That I was of hir felawshipe anon,
And made forward erly for to ryse,
To take our wey, ther as I yow devyse.
But natheles, whyl I have tyme and space
Er that I ferther in this tale pace,
Me thinketh it acordaunt to resoun,
The General Prologue
WHEN APRIL WITH HIS showers sweet
The drought of March has pierced to the root,
And rain, like virtue
Made those flowers grow;
When West Wind with his sweet breath has
Blown through every wood and heath
The tender buds, and the young sun
In Aries has his half-course run;
And little birds make melody,
That sleep all night with open eye—
So pricks them Nature in their souls—
Then folks yearn to go on pilgrimages,
And pilgrims for to seek strange strands,
To faraway shires in sundry lands;
And specially from every shire’s end
Of England to Canterbury they wend,
The holy blissful martyr1 for to seek,
Who helped them, when they were sick.
So in that season on a day,
In Southwark at the Tabard2 as I lay
Ready to wend on my pilgrimage
To Canterbury with full devout courage,
At night was come into that hostelry
Well nine and twenty in a company
Of sundry folk, by sheer chance fallen
Into fellowship, and pilgrims were they all,
Who toward Canterbury would ride.
The rooms and stables were goodsized,
And they gave us among the best.
And shortly, when the sun was to rest,
So had I spoken with them every one
That I was of their fellowship anon,3
And agreed early to arise,
To head out, as I say.
But nevertheless while I have time and space,
Before I further in this tale ride,
Methinks it according to reason
To telle yow al the condicioun
Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,
And whiche they weren, and of what degree;
And eek in what array that they were inne:
And at a knight than wol I first biginne.
A KNIGHT ther was, and that a worthy man
That fro the tyme that he first bigan
To ryden out, he loved chivalrye,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye.
Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,
And therto hadde he riden (no man ferre)
As wel in Cristendom as hethenesse,
And ever honoured for his worthinesse.
At Alisaundre he was, whan it was wonne;
Ful ofte tyme he hadde the bord bigonne
Aboven alle naciouns in Pruce.
In Lettow hadde he reysed and in Ruce,
No Cristen man so ofte of his degree.
In Gernade at the sege eek hadde he be
Of Algezir, and riden in Belmarye.
At Lyeys was he, and at Satalye,
Whan they were wonne; and in the Grete See
At many a noble aryve hadde he be.
At mortal batailles hadde he been fiftene,
And foughten for our feith at Tramissene
In listes thryes, and ay slayn his fo.
This ilke worthy knight had been also
Somtyme with the lord of Palatye,
Ageyn another hethen in Turkye:
And evermore he hadde a sovereyn prys.
And though that he were worthy, he was wys,
And of his port as meke as is a mayde.
He never yet no vileinye ne sayde
In al his lyf, un-to no maner wight.
He was a verray parfit gentil knight.
But for to tellen yow of his array,
His hors were gode, but he was nat gay.
Of fustian he wered a gipoun
Al bismotered with his habergeoun;
To tell you all the calling
Of each of them, so as it seemed to me,
And who they were, and of what character,
And what raiment they were in;
And at a Knight then will first begin.
A KNIGHT there
was,4 and he a worthy man,
Who from the time that he first began
To ride out, he loved chivalry,
Truth and honor, freedom and courtesy.
He fought bravely in his lords’ wars,
And in them had he ridden, no other man so far,
As well in Christendom as in heathen places,
And ever honored for his worthiness.
At Alexandria he was when it was won;
Full often time he’d sat at head of table
Above all the knights of Prussia.
In Lithuania he’d fought and in Russia,
More often than any other Christian man his rank.
In Grenada also had he been at the siege
Of Algeciras, and ridden in Benmarin.
At Ayeas was he and at Adalia
When they were won; and in the Mediterranean
At many a noble crusade had he been.
In duels to the death had he been fifteen,
And fought for our faith in Tlemecen
In tournaments thrice, and slain his foe.
Canterbury Tales (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 5
