In this extract from a modern English translation, Beowulf confronts Grenders mother in her home at the bottom of the sea.

Then he seized G renders mother by the hair — the man of the War-Geats was not afraid of the fight. Hardened from battle and now full of anger, he pulled his deadly enemy so that she fell to the floor. Quickly in her turn she repaid him with her cruel claws and grasped out towards him: then weary-hearted, the strongest of warriors, of foot-soldiers, stumbled so that he fell. Then she sat upon the hall-guest and pulled out her knife, broad and bright-edged. She would avenge her child, her only son. The Woven breast-armour, lay on his shoulder: that protected his life, withstood entry of point or of edge.

Then the son of Ecgtheow, the hero of the Geats, would have found death under the wide waters if the battle-shirt, the hard war-net, had not helped him and of holy God had not achieved victory in war; the wise Lord, Ruler of the Heavens, brought about the right result, easily, when Beowulf stood up again. Then he saw among the armour a victory-blessed weapon, an old sword made by the giants, strong-edged, the glory of warriors: it was the best of weapons, except that it was larger than any other man might carry to the sport of war, trusty and beautifully decorated, the work of giants. The hero of the Scyldings [the Danes], angered and grim in battle, seized the belted handle, drew the ring-marked sword, despairing of life; he struck furiously so that it gripped her hard against the neck, breaking the borie-rings [vertebrae]. The blade went straight through.the doomed body. She fell to the floor, the sword was bloody, the man rejoiced in his work.

After receiving his rewards Beowulf returns to his native Geat-land and relates his story. His king, Hygeiac, gives him lands which he rules for 50 years. A dragon, which had guarded its hoard in peace for 300 years, is stirred by the theft of a goblet to attack the Geats. Beowulf, now Lord of the Geats, battles with the fire-breathing crea­ture and, with the help of Wiglaf, kills it. Unfortunately Beowulf is fatally wounded in the fight, but Wiglaf recovers the dragon's hoard before his lord's death. With his last breath Beowulf asks Wiglaf to be king, for Beowulf had no son. Before burning the body of his liege-lord, Wiglaf puts the blame for his death upon the earls, the cowards. The poem ends with a sorrowful description of Beowulf s funeral fire. Here are a few lines of it, put into modern letters: "The sorrowing soldiers then laid the glorious prince, their dead lord, in the middle. Then on the hill the war-men began to light the greatest of funeral fires. The wood-smoke rose black above the flames, the noisy fire, mixed with sorrowful cries."

The memory of Beowulf is honoured by a memorial, a high mound visible from a great distance so that passing sailors may be constantly reminded of his prowess.

Commentary

The Old English language cannot be read now except by those who have made a special study of it.

The poem gives us an interesting picture of life in those old days. It tells us of fierce fights and brave deeds, of the speeches of the leader and the sufferings of his.men. It describes their life in the halt, the terrible creatures that they had to fight, and their ships and trav­els. They had a hard life on land and sea. They did not enjoy it much, but they bore it well. The poem incorporates the larger considera­tions of life and death, war and peace, society and the individual, good and evil.

The few lines of "Beowulf given above do not explain much about this kind of verse, and it may be well to say something about it. Each half-line has two main beats. There is no rhyme. Instead, each half-line is joined to the other by alliteration (alliteration — two or more words beginning with the same sound). Things are described indirect­ly and in combination of words. A ship is not only a ship: it is a sea-goer, a sea-boat, a sea-wood, or a wave-floater. A sailor is a sea-trav­eller, a seaman, a sea-soldier. Even the sea itself may be called the waves, or the sea-streams, or the ocean-way. This changes a plain statement, into something more colourful, but such descriptions take a lot of time, and the action moves slowly. In Old English poetry, descriptions of sad events or cruel situations are commoner and in bet­ter writing than those of happiness.

THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD I 1100-1485

In 1066) Norman invaders from France conquered England. For more than 200 years thereafter, members of the royal court and the upper class spoke French. Only the common people continued to speak English. By about 1300, however, English had again become the chief national language but in an altered form now called Middle English. Middle English included elements of French, Latin, Old English and local dialects.

The development of English romances. Romances were adventure stories, usually in verse, about battles and heroes. Medieval romances originated in France during the 1100s. By the end of the 1200s, they had become the most popular literary form in England.

In 1155, a Norman poet named Wace completed the first work that mentioned the Knights of the Round Table, who were led by the legendary British ruler King Arthur. King Arthur and his knights became a favourite subject, in English romances. During the 1400s, Sir Thomas Malory wrote a prose work called "Le Morte d Arthur" (The Death of Arthur). Malory's romance is the most complete English version of stories about Arthur.

The age of Chaucer. The greatest writer of the Middle English peri­od was the poet Geoffrey Chaucer. His masterpiece is "The Canterbury Tales" {\&lt 1300s), an unfinished collection of comic and moral stories. Pilgrims tell the stories while passing the time during a journey from London to a religious shrine- in the city of Canterbury. Chaucer introduced a rhythmic pattern called iambic pentameter into English poetry. This pattern, or meter, consists of 10 syllables alter­nately unaccented and accented in each line. The lines may or may not rhyme. Iambic pentameter became a widely used meter in English poetry.

Chaucer's friend John Gower wrote verse in Latin and English. His "Confessio Amantis"(about 1390) is a Middle English poem that uses Biblical, medieval, and mythological stories to discuss the prob­lems of romantic love. A religious and symbolic poem called "Piers Plowman"has been attributed to William Langland, though as many as five persons may have contributed to it. Three versions of the poem appeared in the late 1300s. Like the works of Chaucer and Gower, uPiers Plowman " provides a fascinating glimpse of English life during the 1300s.

Early English drama developed from brief scenes that monks acted out in churches to illustrate Bible stories. The scenes grew into full-length works called mystery plays and miracle plays. Mystery plays dealt with events in the Bible, and miracle plays with the lives of saints. Eventually, craft and merchant guilds (associations) took over presentation of the plays and staged them in town squares.

During the 1400s,' morality plays first appeared in English drama. Morality plays featured characters who represented a certain quali­ty, such as good or evil. These dramas were less realistic than the ear­lier plays and were intended to teach a moral lesson.

THE FIRST UNIVERSITIES

Most of the British writers and poets about whom we are going to speak were educated at universities. It will be interesting to know how and when the two great universities of Oxford and Cambridge were founded in England. Before the 12th century people got to think that books and the knowledge that was to be found in books belonged to the Church only, and that common people who were not priests or monks had no business to meddle with books or book-learning. But with the development of such sciences as medicine and law, corporations of general study, called "universites" appeared in Italy and France. The fully developed university comprised four faculties: three superior faculties, that of Theology (the study of religious books), of Canon Law (church laws) and of Medicine; and one inferior fac­ulty, that of Art, where Music, Grammar, Geometry, Logic and some other subjects were studied.

Paris was the great centre for higher education for English stu­dents. In the middle of the 12th century a controversy on the study of Logic arose among the professors. A group of professors were expelled. Followed by their students, they went over to Britain and founded schools at the town of Oxford in 1168 which formed the first university. However the plague and war and other trouble led to a temporary dispersion of the schools. A second university was formed in 1209 at Cambridge, to which a body of students migrat­ed from Oxford.

The graduates were awarded with degrees: Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts, and Doctor. '

Towards the end of the 13th century colleges where other subjects were studied appeared around the universities.

It became the custom for students to go about from one great university to another, learning what they could from the most famous teachers in each place.

The Norman barons were followed to England by churchmen, scribes, minstrels (roaming singers), merchants and artisans. Each rank of society had its own literature.

sjc . I) During the 12th and 13th centuries monks wrote historical chronicles in Latin. The scholars at Oxford University (such as the monk Roger Bacon who introduced gunpowder) described their experiments in Latin.

2) The aristocracy wrote their poetry in Norman-French.

3) The country-folk made up their ballads and songs in Anglo-Saxon.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER (1340-1400)

Life The year of Chaucer's birth is not known for cer-

tain, but it was probably not long after 1340, for in 1386 he described himself as aged forty years old and more'. His mother was probably called Agnes, and his father was John Chaucer, a prosperous London wine merchant, whose social aspirations led him to attend occasionally upon King Edward III.

A child of young Geoffrey's background would probably have received his basic education first in one of the 'song' schools (so called because they were attached to the cathedrals) and later in a grammar school, where he would have learned Latin and French, the languages in which lessons were normally conducted. However, he is not definitely heard of until 1358, by which time he was a valet in the service of Lionel and Elizabeth, Earl and Countess of Ulster, from whom he received that year a livery of clothing and the sum of two shillings and sixpence for necessaries at Christmas'. These years of service were also part of his education.

The next fact we know is that in 1359 he was on a military expe­dition in France, where he was taken prisoner. King Edward paid 16 pounds, a large sum on those days, towards his ransom; we do not know if this was the fuif amount, but, what ever the case, the sum suggests that Chaucer was already a person of importance, for much smaller sums were paid for other valets of the court. Chaucer acted as a courier in the peace negotiations of 1360, for which he received nine shillings from Prince Lionel.

In the ensuing six years nothing is heard of him at all. One the­ory is that he was studying law in London, another that he was in Ireland with Prince Lionel. It was probably in this period, about 1366, that he married Philippa Roet, a lady-in-waiting to the queen. Her sister, Katherine, was later married to John of Gaunt, son of Edward III and one of the greatest nobles of his day, and as a result Chaucer actually became related to the royal family. By his marriage Chaucer seems to have had at least three children — Elizabeth, Thomas, and Lewis. Philippa was Chaucer's wife for over twenty years, until her death in 1387, about the time when he was embarking on "The Canterbury Tales".

In the years 1366—98 Chaucer was engaged in extensive travels abroad in the service of the king. Many of the details are obscure, and some of the journeys were secret, concerning perhaps delicate matters of diplomacy or trade. The countries he visited include Spain (1366), France (1368), 'part beyond the sea' (1370), Italy (1372 — 73), some unspecified place or places 'in secret negotiations for the king' (1376-81), Italy again (1378), and France again (1387). Presumably he had a fair for foreign languages, including by this time Italian. The visits to France and Italy were to have a profound effect on his writ­ings, for they brought him into contact with important men of let­ters whose new and exciting ideas he incorporated and adapted in his own works.

By 1367 Chaucer seems to have left the service of Prince Lionel and become an esquire of the royal household. In that year he received from the king a pension of twenty marks (approximately 13 pounds) for life, to which in 1374 was added an award of a daily pitcher of wine. That same year he was given rent-free accommo­dation in a house over Aldgate, one of the gates of the city of London, which he occupied for the next twelve years. This year also saw the first of a number of public and professional appointments when he became a Controller of Customs and Subsidy of Wools, Skins and Hides in the Port of London. For this important job the salary was 10 pounds, to which was added an annual bonus often marks. But he probably received more than this in fees and 'perks', such as the sum of over 71 pounds, the fine of a merchant caught trying illegally to export wool, which was given over to him in 1376. Another appointment in 1375—76 was to the lucrative guardianship of two young heirs in Kent; another in 1382 was to a Controllership of Petty Customs of Wines and other Goods; and another in 1385— 89 was to the office of Justice of the Peace for Kent. This last appointment shows that he must have moved from London to Kent, probably to Greenwich, because only residents were eligible to become Justices of the Peace. Obviously he was making a great suc­cess of his public career, and in 1386 he was elected as one of the two Knights of the Shire to the represent Kent in Parliament.

Chaucer retired from his duties as a Controller of Customs in 1386. This change may have been connected with a decline in the influence of his political friends and supporters at court. Richard II, grandson of Edward III, had become king in 1377 at the age of ten, and Chaucer's Controllership and pensions had at the time been reaffirmed. But in the mid- 1380s John of Gaunt's influence over the young king began to diminish as his brother Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, rose to power. These years saw Chaucer sued for debt (1388), and it could be that the change in political circumstances is mirrored in the change in his own fortunes. However, the situation is far from clear, and Chaucer's financial ups and downs seem to have continued, whatever the reason, until the very end of his life.

In 1389 Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the King's Works, the official-in charge of royal buildings, and in 1390 was included in a royal commission on the mundane-sounding subject of walls and ditches. During this period he was attacked and robbed several times of large sum of money belonging to the Works. He w<*z absolved of the respon­sibility to repay the stolen money, but these unpleasant experiences may have inducted him to give up the task before two years had elapsed. He moved straight to a job as deputy forester for the royal for­est of North Petherton in Somerset; his duties were to oversee the rangers and gamekeepers — men like the Yeoman on the Canterbury pilgrimage. This was more successful, and he seems to have continued in this office for most of the remaining years of his life.

Chaucer continued to receive grants and pensions from Richard II until-the latter's deposition in 1399. The new king, Henry IV, was already acquainted with Chaucer, and in 1396 had given him a fine gown trimmed with fur. Upon his accession he immediately recon­firmed Chaucer's annual pension of 20 pounds granted in 1394, and, in fact, increased it with an annuity of twenty marks; and he did not forget the annual butt of wine which had been Chaucer's smce 1397. All the signs are that Chaucer at the very end of his life, as in most of his adult years, was a valued and respected royaf servant.

On Christmas Eve 1399 Chaucer took a lease for 53 years on a house in the garden of Westminster Abbey in London. But his resi­dence there could only have been brief, for within a year, on 25 October 1400, he was dead, his age probably was a little short of sixty. He was buried in the Abbey, and occupies an honoured place in what has since become known as Poets' Corner.

These brief facts tell us quite a lot about Chaucer's public life but almost nothing about his character and personality, for which his works themselves are the primary source of information. The histor­ical records show that he was both a civil servant and courtier. In the former capacity he would have met a wide variety of people, for most of the jobs were not sinecures; and in the latter he would have been close to men of rank, including royalty, though his own middle-class background would have necessitated a degree of modesty, which is something he often affects in his writings.

6

Works The earliest influences on Chaucer's style of writ-

ing and choice of subjects were French. Possibly one of his first undertakings was a translation of the long French alle­gorical poem "Le Roman de la Rose", in which a lover dreams that he is searching for a rose (symbolic of his lady) in a beautiful walled garden peopled by personified abstractions such as Idleness and Chastity; however, Chaucer's part in the authorship of the version which survives is not certain. Another early work is "The Book of the Duchess", also a dream poem, which is said to have been composed as an elegy to Blanche (died in 1369), first wife of John of Gaunt. Yet another dream poem is "The House of Fame", in which Chaucer imagines himself carried by an eagle to a palace dedicated to famous people of old; the poem, which is unfinished and breaks off incon­sequentially, shows the beginnings of the important Italian influence which may have resulted from his travelsabroad. "The Parliament of Fowls" is yet another dream poem; in it the poet imagines him­self to be in a beautiful garden on St. Valentine's Day, where he wit­nesses a gathering of birds at which they all choose their partners for the coming year. "Troilus and Crisyede" is the longest poem which Chaucer completed, and tells a tragic love story set in ancient Troy. Both this and the " РагІіатепГ are strongly influenced by Italian writers such as Boccacio, Dante and Petrarch, as well as by the famous Latin work "Consolation of Philosophy" of the philoso­pher Boesthius (c. 480—c.524 A.D.), of which Chaucer made a prose translation, probably around 1380. Next in sequence is another work never completed, "The Legend of Good Women". In this legend Chaucer pretends to be acting under the instructions of the God of Love to tell the stories of virtuous women as a penance for having defamed the female sex by having previously told of the faithless Crisyede. Finally comes Chaucer's most famous work, associated predominantly with the period 1387—1400, "The Canterbury Talef*.

THE GENERAL PROLOGUE TO THE CANTERBURY TALES

A general summary

In the "General Prologue", Chaucer tells how, at the Tabard Inn in Southwark on the night before his pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury, he fell in with a company of twenty-nine pilgrims. At the suggestion of the Host of the Tabard, they agree to tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back to London, and the best tale is to earn its teller a free supper at the Tabard on their return. The pilgrims accept the Host as judge of the tale telling game.

When they set out next morning, the pilgrims draw lots to decide who shall tell the first tale, and the Knight wins. His noble tale of Palamon and Arcite is admired, particularly by the nobler pilgrims.

and the Host invites the Monk, as senior churchman, to tell the next tale. However, the Miller, who is already drunk, insists instead on telling a bawdy story about the cuckolding of a Carpenter; and the Reeve, who is also a Carpenter, angrily answers with a bawdier story about a Miller. The Cook then begins on a still bawdier tale of an apprentice and a prostitute, but the first fragment of the " Tales" ends when the Cook has scarcely begun.

This pattern of solemnity followed by comic and even ribald chaos is echoed in more than one of the remaining nine fragments of the "Tales", in which twenty-two more pilgrims tell their very var­ied tales, including Chaucer himself (who tells two) and the Parson, whose tale, a long treatise on Christian penitence, ends the collec­tion. "The Canterbury Tales" thus comes to an end before Canterbury is reached, and before the tale-telling competition has completed the first of its four stages.

"The Canterbury Tales", then, is an incomplete work, perhaps because of the poet's death, although many works are unfinished. However, the design of the work is clear enough. As in other medieval collections of popular story, such as the Arabian "Thousand and One Nights" or the "Decameron", by Chaucer's contemporary, Boccaccio, the primary story forms a convenient framework to a mis­cellany of many different kinds of tales: romances, fairy-stories, bawdy tales, sermons, saints' lives, best-fables, allegories. However, this frame-story, as it is sometimes called, has a life of its own. Some of the tales are dramatic expressions of the characters of their tellers, and events of the pilgrimage are sometimes of greater, interest and significance than the tales. Finally, many.critics see the pilgrimage itself as having a symbolic significance which gives the work its underlying purpose.

The "General Prologue" (so called to differentiate it from pro­logues to individual tales) is the general narrative introduction to " The Canterbury Tales!" as a whole. It sets the scene in spring, the season of pilgrimages, and introduces Chaucer as a pilgrim at the Tabard Inn. Then follows the series of portraits of individual pil­grims, from the Knights down to the Pardoner. Finally we meet the Host and hear his proposal for the tale-telling competition. The next morning the pilgrimage sets out, with the Knight about to begin his tale.

Commentary

The "General Prologue" is an expository introduction and over­ture to the "Tales", introducing both the tellers and the themes of the pilgrimaged Because it is itself so entertaining, varied and self-contained, and because it has a vivid freshness like that of medieval manuscript illuminations and stained'glass windows, it is often read on its own. Thus deta'ched, it can be taken as. Chaucer's picture of the society of his time, especially as the gallery of portraits of the pilgrims is a fairy representative cross^-section of those who were free to go on a pilgrimage. Also, it is written in a vivid and realistic style, so that we can imagine that Chaucer did meet actu­al people resembling his fellow-pilgrims. Chaucer's story-telling art allows us to combine with the interest of understanding something of medieval society the pleasure of becoming involved with a real set of people.

The portraits should not be allowed to dominate the "Prologue" to the exclusion of what precedes and follows them. Unlike the series of full-length portraits, which, however lively, remains some­what static, the introduction to the portraits is narrative and dra­matic, and its sequel is much more so: the pilgrims step out of their portraits and talk, quarrel and drink; one of them even falls off his horse. The introduction, and the proposal and acceptance of the tale-telling game, present us with two further pilgrims, who are dra­matized rather than described: the pilgrim Chaucer, our guide, and the Host, our master of ceremonies. The portraits belong to the con­text of the "Prologue" and they should be seen in that context, as the "Prologue" only comes in to its own when the whole of "The Canterbury Tales" is read. The portraits are part of a developing fic­tional action, as well as illustrating the most brilliant page in English medieval social history. To use a theatrical analogy, it is rather as \f"The Canterbury Tales" opened with the cast assembled on the stage at the beginning instead of at the end of a play. A true histor­ical sense invplves us in seeing these characters as living: when we see the Merchant, we see the eternal pompous businessman, and not just a typical representative of an emerging class in the City of London in the late fourteenth century. Later on he turns out to be unhappily married, and becomes even more of a human being than the representative of a class.

Here is a last point about Chaucer's illusion of verisimilitude: he apologises for the random informality of the order in which he presents the pilgrims. But this modesty is partly a joke, for he has in fact set folk in their degree, according to a hierarchy which is both social and moral: the Knight is at the top and the Pardoner is at the bottom. The military Estate is followed by the clerical Estate; the clerics by the Laity; the upper-middle class by the lower-mid­dle class with the rascals at the end. Further, within this apparent­ly casual order of descending importance and merit, there is anoth­er kind of order created by dramatic contrasts in juxtaposition: the Knight fights for his Lord, the Squire for his Lady; the Merchant's talk is full of his prospering business, the Clerk's of moral virtue; the Clerk's cope is threadbare, the Friar's is new. On inspection, the u General Prologue" is found to, have a rich unobtrusive moral pat­tern. It is not only a historically representative cross-section of social types, nor an impression of some striking individuals. Like Shakespeare and the great novelists, Chaucer in "The Canterbury Tales" gives us a representation of the human comedy, not of his day only but of all time.

The Portraits

While it is necessary to consider the portraits of the pilgrims in context, and to remember that they are seen through the innocent eyes of the narrator, any critical comment on the "Prologue" must chiefly concentrate on the portraits themselves. First to be consid­ered is the order of appearance, which might be set out as follows:

(1) Military: Knight, Squire, Yeoman.

(2) Clergy: Prioress, Monk, Friar.

(3) Bourgeois: Merchant, Clerk, Sergeant of the Law, Franklin, Guildsmen, Cook, Shipman, Doctor of Physic, Wife of Bath.

(4) Good Men: Parson, Ploughman.

(5) Petty Bourgeois: Miller, Manciple, Reeve. (6)" Church Officers: Summoner, Pardoner.

Medieval social theory divided the King's subjects into three Estates: the Military, the Cleigy and the Laity. Chaucer observes this division, although the Clerk and Parson are included with the Laity. The Laity-groups (3), (4) and (5) are arranged in only a rough order of precedence, unlike the first two Estates. The Sergeant of the Law, for example, would outrank the two men introduced before him; and the Franklin, as an old established landholder, would outrank the newly rich Sergeant. These, however, are. minor details. The Laity are divided into three groups here: the financially independent upper-middle class, and the lower-middle class who works for them; with, between the two, the" Parson and Ploughman, free men who belong to the gentle classes but, because of their Jionesty, are poorer than social inferiors. Finally we have the ecclesiastical villains.

As a panorama of medieval life the pilgrimage excludes the top and the bottom of society, and also women, with the exception of a Prioress with her attendant nuns, and an independent widow. It is striking that everyone in groups (3), (5) and (6) is more or less moti­vated by avarice, with the exception of the Clerk, who stands in stark contrast between the Merchant and the Sergeant. The Military are exempt from this bourgeois vice, and so are the senior Clergy, with the exception of the Friar, though both the conventual religious are too wordly for their profession.

The Military. Knights had dominated the English society since the Norman Conquest, and it is significant that Chaucer begins his catalogue with so shining an example of Christian chivalry, thus set­ting an ideal standard, of which nearly all the other pilgrims fall short. The Knight is defined in terms of his virtues and actions (he has lived in the saddle as a defender of the faith), rather than by his appearance and words. The Knight is also distinguished from his son, who has fought against fellow-Christians in France, whereas the Knight's heroism is religious in impulse. In his courtesy of dress he completes the figure of the English Christian gentleman, and is one of three pilgrims who are presented as perfect. Like the Parson and the Ploughman, the thrice-worthy Knight is the ideal of his Estate.

8

Works ^ne earnest influences on Chaucer's style of writ-

ing and choice of subjects were French. Possibly one of his first undertakings was a translation of the long French alle­gorical poem "Le Roman de la Rose", in which a lover dreams that he is searching for a rose (symbolic of his lady) in a beautiful walled garden peopled by personified abstractions such as idleness and Chastity; however, Chaucer's part in the authorship of the version which survives is not certain. Another early work is "The Book of the Duchess", also a dream poem, which is said to have been composed as an elegy to Blanche (died in' 1369), first wife of John of Gaunt. Yet another dream poem is "The House of Fame"in which Chaucer imagines himself carried by an eagle to a palace dedicated to famous people of old; the poem, which is unfinished and breaks off incon­sequentially, shows the beginnings of the important Italian influence which may have resulted from his travels abroad. "The Parliament of Fowls" is yet another dream poem; in it the poet imagines him­self to be in a beautiful garden on St. Valentine's Day, where he wit­nesses a gathering of birds at which they all choose their partners for the coming year. "Troilus and Crisyede" is the longest poem which Chaucer completed, and tells a tragic love story set in ancient Troy. Both this and the "Parliament* are strongly influenced by Italian writers such as Boccacio, Dante and Petrarch, as well as by the famous Latin work "Consolation of Philosophy" of the philoso­pher Boesthius (c. 480—c.524 A.D.), of which Chaucer made a prose translation, probably around 1380. Next in sequence is another work never completed, "The Legend of Good Women". In this legend Chaucer pretends to be acting under the instructions of the God of Love to tell the stories of virtuous women as a penance for having defamed the female sex by having previously told of the faithless Crisyede. Finally comes Chaucer's most famous work, associated predominantly with the period 1387—1400, "The Canterbury Tales*'.

THE GENERAL PROLOGUE TO THE CANTERBURY TALES

A general summary

In the '"General Prologue", Chaucer tells how, at the Tabard inn in Southwark on the night before his pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury, he fell in with a company of twenty-nine pilgrims. At the suggestion of the Host of the Tabard, they agree to tell two tales on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back to London, and the best tale is to earn its teller a free supper at the Tabard on their return. The pilgrims accept the Host as judge of the tale telling game.

When they set out next morning, the pilgrims draw lots to decide who shall tell the first tale, and the Knight wins. His noble tale of Palamon and Arcite is admired, particularly by the nobler pilgrims, and the Host invites the Monk, as senior churchman, to tell the next tale. However, the Miller, who is already drunk, insists instead on telling a bawdy story about the cuckolding of a Carpenter; and the Reeve, who is also a Carpenter, angrily answers with a bawdier story about a Miller. The Cook then begins on a still bawdier tale of an apprentice and a prostitute, but the first fragment of the "Tales" ends when the Cook has scarcely begun.

This pattern of solemnity followed by comic and even ribald chaos is echoed in more than one of the remaining nine fragments of the "Tales", in which twenty-two more pilgrims tell their very var­ied tales, including Chaucer himself (who tells two) and the Parson, whose tale, a long treatise on Christian penitence, ends the collec­tion. "The Canterbury Tales" thus conies to an end before Canterbury is reached, and before the tale-telling competition has completed the first of its four stages.

"The Canterbury Tales", then, is an incomplete work, perhaps because of the poet's death, although many works are unfinished. However, the design of the work is clear enough. As in other medieval collections of popular story, such as the Arabian "Thousand and One Nights" or the "Decameron", by Chaucer's contemporary, Boccaccio, the primary story forms a convenient framework to a mis­cellany of many different kinds of tales: romances, fairy-stories, bawdy tales, sermons, saints' lives, best-fables, allegories. However, this frame-story, as it is sometimes called, has a life of its own. Some of the tales are dramatic expressions of the characters of their tellers, and tl\e events of the pilgrimage are sometimes of greater, interest and significance than the tales. Finally, many.critics see the pilgrimage itself as having a symbolic significance which gives the work its underlying purpose.

The "General Prologue" (so called to differentiate it from pro­logues to individual tales) is the general narrative introduction to " The Canterbury Tales" as a whole. It sets the scene in spring, the season of pilgrimages, and introduces Chaucer as a pilgrim at the Tabard Inn. Then follows the series of portraits of individual pil­grims, from the Knights down to the Pardoner. Finally we meet the Host and hear his proposal for the tale-telling competition. The next morning the pilgrimage sets out, with the Knight about to begin his tale.

Commentary

The "General Prologue" is an expository introduction and over­ture to the "Tales", introducing both the tellers and the themes of the pilgrimage! Because it is itself so entertaining, varied and self-contained, and because it has a vivid freshness like that of medieval manuscript illuminations and stained'glass windows, it is often read on its own. Thus deta'ched, it can be taken as. Chaucer's picture of the society of his time, especially as the gallery of portraits of the pilgrims is a fairy representative cross-section of those who

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All the pilgrims are described in terms of superlatives: each is the perfect example of his or her type. The Knight is the antique pat­tern of the chivalry of Edward ill's time; his son is a type of gallant young lover, fresh and fashionable, perhaps like some members of Chaucer's court audience. His description is an example of the ргіл-cipie of contrast which governs much of the arrangement of the "Prologue", even down to apparently casual detail. The Knight had good horses but was not gay in appearance himself; indeed his coarse tunic is all rusty. His son is dressed up like a picture of the Spring; he cuts a fine figure on a horse, but no horse is mentioned. The father fights in his lord's war, and has thrice slain his foe; for his part, the son has done well for a.beginner in his chyvachie across the Channel, in the hope of gaining his lady's favour. (We must bear in mind that the Black Prince, Edward Ill's son and Richard II's father, had led the English army into battle at the age of fifteen; and that Chaucer himself had been a French prisoner-of-war by the time he was twenty.) The Squire's prowess is as a lover rather than as a knight: like the birds, he does not sleep at night. However, though he is treated with some amusement, the Squire is a delightful figure. Besides, he is a dutiful son.

The Yeoman's portrait is perhaps the most vivid in the "Prologue", yet it is entirely anonymous. In keeping with medieval admiration for professional skill, the adverb Chaucer chooses to describe the way the Yeoman looked after his takel is yeomanlike. He is every inch an archer and a forester, resplendent in the badges of his trade. The archers in the English army were instrumental in win­ning the battles of the Hundred Years War (1337—1453). The Knight and his follower are thus an emblem of the great English past.

The Clergy. The clerical Estate presents a much less worthy trio. The Prioress is a lady to her fingertips; as for the Monk, he was a lord ful fat and in good poynt; the Friar is a libertine, a play­boy and a confidence trickster. They are each precisely what they should not be.

The Prioress's faults are, however, venial. Like all Prioresses in the middle ages, and some today, she has the manners of the upper class, which the narrator appears to admire greatly, describ­ing them at length. He is also fascinated by her delicious appear­ance, which is that of a heroine of romance, as is her name. Her tenderness to her dogs, and the ambiguous motto on her rosary, suggest a rather more serious diversion of interest on the part of one devoted to the service of Christ. However, her tale is as con­ventionally pious as her manners are exquisite. The narrator is clearly bewitched by her glamorous looks and the appearance of a romantic sensibility.

Love has also conquered the other two celibates, the manly Monk and the Friar. The Monk, whose name is later given as Don John, and Friar Huberd both have love tokens. The Monks gold pin with a love-knot (lines 196 — 197) echoes the Nun's gold brooch; the

Friar carries a stock of pins to give to pretty women (line 234). АГІ three regular clergy have names (unlike the military trio) and all three, have love-tokens: an example of the use of significant detail to link portraits. Both men have luxurious tastes and dress expensively. The Friar's corruption, however, goes further than the Monk's.

The hunting Monk is a familiar caricature and the details of his fine horses, his fur cuffs and his fat swan could be paralleled from other anticlerical satire in the middle ages. It might be more prof­itable, then, to focus on details of Chaucer's art rather than on his social criticism. Three techniques used in the portrait are repeated elsewhere. Few of the pilgrims are presented entirely by listing visu­al details; the chief method, especially in satirical portraits, is to describe with admiratioB and enthusiasm all those features of which the victim himself is particularly proud. Thus the Monk's manliness, fine horses, supple boots and diet are remarked on with warm approval. Secondly, the narrator appears to echo the words of the pilgrim's most characteristically revealing statements. Thus, lines 174—89 virtually report a conversation in which the Monk gives himself away by protesting against the strictness of the old Rule of St. Benedict. Yet, as a Regular, he has bound himself to keep these Rules by a religious vow. These two techniques, praising the subject's most inappropriate vices and quoting his idiocies with approval, are part of Chaucer's basic satirical method, which is to allow fools to give themselves away.

The same ironies'are applied more sarcastically to the Fair. He is the most skilful seducer in all the four (celibate) orders-. He kind­ly arranges marriages for girls that he has made pregnant. He gives an easy penance in return for a good bribe. These are examples of vice being praised.

Most of the images in the "Prologue" are proverbial; this is more decorative. However, the comparison of the charming Friar's twin­kling eyes to the stars is rendered suddenly chilling by the inclusion of the adjective frosty. The calculating nature of the professional par­asite is revealed by an irony of which the artless narrator remains unconscious. It is by these tiny touches that the poet makes his effects, and converts the objects of his satire from types into believ­able people. It is because the narrator portrays them so sympatheti­cally and admiringly, for being what they are, that Chaucer is often regarded as being a humorous and comic writer rather than a reform­ing satirist.

Hie Bourgeois. After the lavish detail and display of the Friar's description, the Merchant's is short and understated. Yet the poet artfully conveys to us that even his narrator finds the Merchant rather dull: he was worthy (that is he seemed a sound man ) but chose not to give this name. The Merchant may have travelled in company for safety's sake. His self-importance about his business is self-defeating, since his confidential remark to the-narrator that no one knew he was in debt is gossiped to the whole world.

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The Clerk's portrait is in contrast to the Merchant's as the Squire's is to the Knight's. The Merchant is worldly, the Clerk unworldly, and this shows in every detail of their clothes, mounts, interests and conversation. The man of money booms his business; the philosopher is crisp and instructive.

The narrator, a man of the world, is amused by the Clerk's unworldliness, and jokes about this philosopher who has no gold. But the poet speaks warmly about his love of books, his true piety and his elevated, economical speech. The difference between the values of the poet and of his narrator is evident.

The Sergeant is another impressively learned man, but with plen­ty of gold in his coffer. He applies his superlative skill to personal enrichment, in further contrast to the Oxford cleric. It can be seen now that the placing of the Clerk's portrait was for reasons of dra­matic and moral contrast, not of.social precedence.

The liveliness of the Wife of Bath, Chaucer's most famous char­acter, comes as a relief. Her portrait here is enormously amplified by the long preamble to her tale, where she indulges in unrestrained autobiography. In her "Prologue" she explains her five husbands and also two apparently inconsequential points of the portrait — her deaf­ness and the connection between her wandering and her teeth. The deafness, however, is not an insignificant detail, but the result of a blow on the eaffrom her fifth husband. He had been reading to her from an encyclopedic work on the faults of women, when she knocked him into the fire and tore three leaves from his book; he struck her on the ear, but was so alarmed when she fainted that she was able to make him promise to give her sovereignty in the mar­riage. In medieval theory and law, biblical in origin, the man is the head of the woman, and should be obeyed.

The Wife's portrait begins with an evidently standard feature of the dreadful women whom clerks (and comic writers) in the middle ages liked to caricature. She is self-important and vain. However, this liking for display is cleverly combined by Chaucer with her profession (cloth-making); and her vanity in church (a scandal to clerics) is treated with the hyperbole of rolalliche, but here carried to magnifi­cent heights of absurdity. The Church required that at Mass women should cover their heads, lest their hair distract the men. The Wife's cover-chiefe, of her own manufacture, weigh ten pound (or so the nar­rator dares swear, though he has never seen her in church on Sunday). Her stockings are scarlet and tight-laced, and her shoes are moyste and newe. She is thus the scarlet woman, flaunting her wares, whom the preachers against female vanity loved to hate. But, and this is very Chaucerian, she is both hate sexually attractive and at the same time ridiculously over-dressed. Her face is bold and red (the colour of Mars) but also fair (pretty).

The Wife is thus the monster of anti-feminist satire—aggressive, nagging, gossiping, lustful, vain, wasteful, domineering and — still worse — dominant. But she is also more human than any stereotype,

and some critics find her lovable in her overflowing human vanity. Above all, she is a comic figure.

A last point about the Wife's portrait is that it contains several symbolic details of a sort that appears increasingly in the satirical portraits of the lower characters. Thus, the redness of her face, her hat as broad as a shield and her sharp spurs all suggest her martial qualities.

The Good Men. The Parson and the Ploughman are truly good men, strikingly different and apart from the social world through which we have been descending. They are described in terms of their virtues rather than their physical appearance, diet or tastes. The materialists are described materialistically, the idealists idealistically. The contrast is absolute. Both brothers are characters formed direct­ly upon the ideals of the Church and the Gospel. Unlike all the bour­geois characters, and most of the clergy, they give rather than take; they love God and their neighbour; they work hard for others; and they are humble. Although such men were as rare as saints, their ideals were accepted as normal and are clearly shared by Chaucer. There is energy as well as piety in both descriptions, and they are made persuasive by the same colloquial actuality that animates the other portraits.

The Petty Bourgeois and the Church Officers* The Miller, how­ever, is a grotesque figure, coarse and menacing. His description is unprecedentedly physical, partly because his brutal strength is the key to his character (he-is a bully) and partly because of the satirical tra-ditionof caricaturing low and vicious persons as gross *and beastly. Even the Miller's profession involves breaking and crushing. The hairs on the wart on the top of his nose are red, as are his beard and his huge mouth, whereas his nostrils are black. These last two details seem sinister, even hellish: the Devil's mouth is portrayed in medieval painting as the gaping mouth of a furnace. The Miller's thieving and his dirty mind seem quite minor beside the power and cruelty implicit in his portrait.

The Manciple, by contrast, is gentil, but is also a thief of others' food, like the Miller, yet more discreetly. The pilgrim Chaucer is amused by seeing the legal defrauders legally defrauded by their un­educated servant. Indeed the irony of the portrait only becomes unmistakable with the last line. The Manciple is not individualised — he is a faceless man.

The Reeve, by contrast, is immediately described as mean in every sense of the word. He is scrawny, unlike the Miller, and angry, unlike the Manciple. He is also like the Miller in that he oppresses those below him (603 — 05). Millers were the natural enemies of Reeves and of carpenters, and the Reeve is a carpenter too. This rivalry breaks out in their respective tales, aдd it becomes clear why they, ride at opposite ends of the pilgrimage.

Finally comes theprecious pair whom even the pilgrim derides as villains. The Summoner is the simpler of the two: a lecher, a

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drunkard, a corrupt officer of the law, easily bribed by a drink from a fellow-criminal; demanding bribes from those who prefer their purses to their souls; corrupting the young. The Pardoner is silli­er and more corrupt than the cunning but stupid Summoner. He sings alto to the Summoner's bass, and it is clearly stated that he is physically a eunuch, an incomplete man. This effeminacy explains his affected hairstyle, and possibly his carrying the par­dons or bulls in his lap, as a compensating source of potency. The narrator scorns the Pardoner's effeminacy but, as always, respects professional skill.

The Pardoner has false relics, which fool the ignorant country folk into giving him money which should go to the parish priest. He preaches so well because he knows that his takings depend upon it. This account of the Pardorjer's art is drawn from his own boasting. Indeed the Pardoner's own "Prologue" and *Tale" dramatically illus­trate in detail how he uses his relics, how he preaches and tells a story, and how he blackmails the guilty and ignorant into buying his pardons. The Host, however, exposes the sterile nature of the Pardoner's false bulls from Rome, and exposes him also as a eunuch. The Pardoner is contemptible because he defrauds the poor, like a crooked insurance salesman; but he is doubly contemptible on the pilgrimage, because he usurps the function of the Parson. Pardoners could not pardon any­one's sins, nor were they licensed to preach. This Pardoner was not a cleric, did not come from Rome, sold false pardons and — worst of all, as his "Tale" shows — did not believe in the pardons he professed to sell. He was thus a complete fraud. The theme of his sermon is, by a sublime irony. Radix malorum est cupiditas (the love of money is the root of all evils). Far from being a pilgrim, he is a dangerous parasite, a wolf in sheep's clothing. Hence he is symbolically made a eunuch of repugnant appearance — a fit partner for the ecclesiastical policeman who aids and abets him.

ASSIGNMENT

Hold discussions on the points

• What is Chaucer's purpose in the "General Prologue"?

• Distinguish Chaucer the poet from Chaucer the pilgrim, who is a character in the poem and also its narrator.

• How far do portraits of the pilgrims portray ideal types rather than real individuals? How far*is the purpose of the "Prologue" moral rather than sociological? How far are the portraits informed by Chaucer's career experience, how far by his ideals, how far by satirical convention?

■ What conclusions can be drawn from the portraits in the "Prologue" about Chaucer's view of medieval society?

• Notice how some pilgrims are characterised by their dress, others by their ideals; some by their physique and diet, oth­ers by their speech; some by their actions, others by their manners; some by their history, others by their tastes; all by their profession, its skills and abuses. Which pilgrims does the pilgrim Chaucer like and dislike? What do his preferences sug­gest about his values? How do these differ from the poet's?

• What are the themes which emerge from the "Prologue1"} Which human qualities and weaknesses does Chaucer empha­sise? Is his attitude to the weaknesses one of indignation, irony, amusement, neutrality, indulgence or approval?

• Consider the role of contrast in the arrangement of the por­traits, and the use of significant detail to link together groups of simitar pilgrims.

THE PARDONER'S TALE A general summary

The tale is about a group of young people in Flanders who lead a life of shocking debauchery — gambling, fornicating, swearing, rev­elling, and eating, and drinking to excess. Almost as soon as he has introduced them the Pardoner launches into a lengthy expression of moral indignation, first concerning drunkenness and gluttony, then gambling and swearing, in which he has recourse to a succession of exempla (allusions to well-known exemplary tales) and to Biblical and traditional authorities by whom these evils are condemned. As the tale continues we find three of these riotoujres drinking in a tavern early one morning when they hear a funeral cortege passing by. They learn that an old friend has died at the hands of a privee theef named Death, who has been responsible for killing many others in that region. In a drunken rage the three swear an oath of brotherhood and set off together to bring Death to a quick end.

Before they get very far they meet an old man, whom they abuse and accuse of being in league with Death. The old man denies it, but tells them where they can find Death, if they are so set in that pur­pose. Off they rush to the place, but instead of their adversary they find a heap of gold florins under an oak tree. All thoughts, of their quest now vanish as they rapturously contemplate the lives of luxu­rious debauchery they will now be able to lead.

The treasure must be taken home under the cover of night, so in the meantime the youngest is dispatched to town to fetch bread and wine. In his absence the remaining two make a plan to kill him upon his return and to keep his share for themselves; but the man on the errand is also overcome by greed, and puts poison in the wine he has brought for them. He is attacked and killed, and the others, after celebrating with a drink, meet their deaths by poisoning. After a final expression of moral outrage the Pardoner exhorts his listeners to come forward to buy pardons. Seemingly this is a part of his regular performance, for he goes on to offer his services'specifically to his fellow pilgrims:

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Commentary

Pardoners in the medieval Church. The function of a pardoner in the medieval Church will require some explanation. Punishments were imposed on members of the Church for their sins, and these penances might take various forms, such as repeating prayers or psalms, fasting, or other forms of self mortification. Gradually the practice grew up of allowing sinners to exchange one form of pun­ishment for another, and particularly of allowing them to pay a fine instead of performing a physical penance. By the fourteenth centu­ry the theory known the Treasury of Grace had developed. According to this, the Church was the guardian of the merits of Christ, the- Virgin, aлd the saints. Their merits were more than enough to compensate for all the sins that mankind might commit, and so it was possible for the Church, as keeper of the Treasury, to distribute them among its members. Thus individual penance came to seem unnecessary: all that was needed was true penitence and payment in money or goods. Thus the sinner would be dispensed from his penance, and the Church would obtain resources for car­rying out good works.

Special officers were required for carrying out such exchanges: they were called quaestores in Latin, pardoners in English. They might be priests or monks, but they might also, like Chaucer's Pardoner, be laymen .employed as professionals. Their work would be carefully regulated by the higher authorities of the Church; they would require written authorization, signed and sealed by a bishop or by the Pope himself; they would be allowed to remit the punishments only on those who were taily penitent, and their gains would have to be hand­ed over to their superiors. This is what pardoners originally had been, and what they still ought to have been, but if we turn from this sum­mary to the pardoner Chaucer describes, we find not a replica but an appalling parody.

Certain elements remain. A quaestor needed an episcopal licence, and Chaucer's Pardoner has not just one but several, with the seals of all possible authorities dangling from them.

He might possibly have had a genuine licence from the local bishop, but only the very simple could expect him to be authorised as well by popes, cardinals, patriarkes and bishopes. The Pardoner is careful to point out that he can offer no help to those who have on their consciences sins so appalling that they have not dared to con­fess them. But this apparent scrupulosity is really a leVer for his own advantage, for naturally none of his audience will wish to admit pub­licly that his or her conscience is burdened in this way. Instead, they will all come rushing forward with their offerings simply to prove that they are not in moral sin. Moreover, though the Pardoner reminds his audience that they must have confessed their sinne horrible before he will release them from their penance, he goes on to claim that he will then absolve them.

Clearly he is claiming the power to absolve sinners not only from the penance for their sins but also from the sins themselves. He is offering to cure them from the effect of sin, to restore them to the innocence of a newly born child, to send them straight to heaven at the moment of death; but these powers belonged only to a priest, not to a lay quaestor. The Pardoner's constant trick is to usurp the role of a priest, and to exploit it for histrionic purposes — it is the role itself that he finds attractive and profitable, not the responsibilities that should go with it. His whole offering to the pilgrims is in the form of a specimen sermon, with the Tale \tsolf as an illustration of his text; but lay quaestores were in general specifically prohibited from preaching.

With.the role of a priest he combines that of medicine man. Among those holy relics mentioned in "The General Prologue" there are the veil of the Blessed Virgin (actually a pillow-case) and a piece of the sail from St. Peter's boat. Later we hear of the transparent cases which will heal and protect men and beasts, and even cure jeal­ousy; of a mitten which will ensure a good crop to anyone who has put his hand in it; and of other relics, of unspecified power, avail­able for kissing by the faithful if a suitable offering is made. Here a last difference from the quaestor as he should be emerges. The true quaestor collects money for the Church, but the Pardoner keeps all he gains for his own profit, and indeed boasts of the fact. The con­stant theme of his preaching is 'Ware yow fro the sinne of avarice', but avarice is his own ruling passion. He is aware of the paradox, and calls it constantly to our attention.

Evidence about XIV Century Pardoners. How are we to explain this vast difference between the quaestor according to the canons of the Church and Chaucer's Pardoner? We may feel tempted to suppose that Chaucer was simply inventing an anti-ecclesiastical satire to shock his audience and make them laugh. But historical evidence shows that in the Pardoner he has drawn an astonishingly accurate picture of the quaestor as he really was in the J4th century. The original idea of the office had become utterly corrupted, and historical warrant can be found for every aspect of the corruption that Chaucer depicts.

In 1390 — only a few years before the probable date of compo­sition of "The Pardoner's Tate" — Pope Boniface IX issued a letter in which he exposed some of the very abuses presented by Chaucer. There are false pardoners, he says, who 'affirm that they are sent by us or by the legates or nuncios of the apostolic see, and that they have been given a mission... to receive money for us and the Roman Church, and they go about the country under these pretexts'. Chaucer's Pardoner similarly claims to come from Rome, and the simple pil­grim Chaucer of "The General Prologue" swallows his claim unques-tioningly. The Pardoner is presented not only as having come from Rome, but as being employed to collect alms by the Chapel and Hospital at Charring Cross,in London. He may really have held this position, but there are.grounds for suspicion, because in the 1380s

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warrants were issued to arrest persons claiming to be collecting alms for this hospital but converting their receipts to their own use. Once again Chaucer is following historical fact. Boniface goes on in his let­ter that these false quaestores 'proclaim to the faithful and simple peo­ple the real or pretended authorization which they have received; and, irreverently abusing those which are real, in pursuit of infamous and hateful gain, they carry further their impudence by mendaciously attributing to themselves false and pretended authorization of this kind'. We have just seen how Chaucer's Pardoner displays his many bulles in this way; and Chaucer follows Pope Boniface in leaving us in doubt as to whether they were 'real or pretended authorizations'. Boniface was right in thinking forgery likely; in 1378 a certain Thomas Pardoner was arrested as a forger of the seal of the Lord the Pope'. Chaucer's Pardoner, in his greed, is willing to accept goods instead of money in payment for his services. In this too he seems to be typical, for the bishop of Durham orders false quaestores to be arrested and deprived of 'the money and any other articles collected by them'. The preaching activities of the Pardoner are fully paralleled in fourteenth-century documents. It seems, then, that, grotesquely exaggerated as Chaucer's Pardoner may appear, his way of life was in fact that of a possible, if not typical, quaestor of the fourteenth century. But to defend Chaucer against the charge of distorting his­torical truth is not to say very much about his poetic achievement in "The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale". Chaucer was by no means the only writer of his time to present a pardoner unfavourably.

The effect the Pardoner has on us, as Chaucer describes him in "The General Prologue", is at once comic, contemptible, and sinis­ter. The comedy is not purely satirical; it does not preclude enjoy­ment in its object, and in this it is very typical of Chaucer. Through him, we can delight in the roguery of a thoroughgoing rogue, and so we can take pleasure in the details of the Pardoner's trickery — the pillow-case which is supposed to be Our Lady's veil, the pigges bones which serve for holy relics, and the special skill he puts into singing an offertorie.

But through this delight runs a strong vein of contempt, which surfaces not so much in his actions as in his physical appearance. He rides along as a ghastly parody of a fashionable young man, with his hood left off for jo Шее and his yellow hair spread out over his shoul­ders. But the hair is lank and thin. He is a parody not just of fash­ion but of manhood. Modern scholarship has shown how exactly the Pardoner's physical features reproduce those which medieval physi­ology assigned to the eunuch — the beardlessness, the high bleating voice, the long hair and the long neck. These signs of physical steril­ity may act as images of a different kind of sterility — the spiritual emptiness disclosed in his Prologue and Tale. This is perhaps one reason why Chaucer chose to make his Pardoner a eunuch. But they also have a more direct effect, in arousing repulsion and even fear. But he possesses a power which is far greater and far more sinisteF — a power over men's souls, arising not from any physical advantages but from his will alone. That such a weakly impotent creature should possess such power to make men act he wishes: there is something sinister in that. The sinister remains a fundamental element when the Pardoner begins on his Prologue and Tale.

The settings. From the outset the story has the features of a moral tale. The young revellers are not individually drawn. Nowhere in the tale are they given names, and we do not even know how many of them there are until much later, when they are casually referred to as 'thise riotoures thre'. They are simply designated 'one of them', 'the third', 'the proudest', 'the worst', 'the youngest'and so on; but this is specific enough, for they are meant to be exemplary, not realistic. We are told straightforwardly enough what they get up to — having a good time, gambling, visiting brothels and taverns, cursing, swear­ing, keeping the very worst company, and generally leading lives of unrelieved debauchery — and we are encouraged to see them as rep­resentatives of the sum total of all these vices. Chaucer's public, which was more trained in such matters, would instantly have thought of the deadly sins which these excesses indicate. The tale, then, is about sin; and everyone knows (and certainly knew then) that the wages of sin is death.

The Portraits

The Pardoner is not the sort merely to hint at a moral point when he can thunder it home with a rhetorical flourish, and he now embarks upon a long digression in condemnation of the most blatant of the evils which these Flemish revellers exemplify. He begins with the deadly sin of gluttony, and includes a few sideswipes at drunk­enness, which is a branch of it. In effect he preaches a sort of sub-sermon, on the text (based on St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians) that luxurie is in wyn and dronkenesse where luxurie means excess, with overtones particularly of lechery. The technique is typical of medieval sermons. Two exempla provide instances of famous peo­ple who illustrate the point: Lot, who committed incest, and Herod, who gave the order for John the Baptist to be beheaded, both acting under the influence of drink.

A more substantial change of subject comes when the theme of gambling is taken up. Gambling was condemned, as the Pardoner says, for the many sins with which it was associated: lying, decep­tion, perjury, blasphemy, manslaughter and waste. Among princes gambling was especially despised, as the works of instruction for princes, the so-called "Mirrors for Princes", taught. Again the point is made through the use of exempla: firstly the story of Chilon, the Lacedemonian ambassador (here he is mistakenly called Stilboun), who refused to make an alliance with, the Corinthians because they were a nation of gamblers; and secondly, the story of the gift to King Demetrius of a pair of golden dice in scorn of his gambling habits.

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The focus is narrowed to three of the riotoures, but in them the polarisation of good and evil is just as clear as before. The three have made an early start to the day's drinking, for long before the bell of prime they are' already in the tavern. Prime was the six o'clock church service, and the mention of this reminds us of an ordered religious life very different from that which these men are leading. A funeral procession passes, and churlishly one of the men orders his serving-boy to find out who has died. The boy already knows that the dead man is an old friend of theirs and that the culprit is a sneak-thief named Death, who has taken many other lives throughout the region. The boy has a healthy respect for him, as would all medieval people who had lived through the sort of plague for which it is said that Death is responsible. From sermons, books-and pictures all medieval people would have learned about Death's sudden coming, his spear, the uselessness of contending with him, and his equal treatment of all types of people.

The Old Man. They have hardly begun their quest when they come across an old man, a strange and pathetic figure, yet at the same time uncanny and disturbing. It is useful to think about what his function is in the tale. Obviously he helps keep the theme of death very much in mind, for he even looks like a corpse, being wrapped up with only his face exposed, like a dead body in a shroud. He is therefore a sort of memento mori, a reminderof death which medieval people used to help concentrate their thoughts upon virtue. He jSlays a similar role to the character called Age in the morality plays, whose function is to warn of the nearness of Death. Another of his functions is to teach the riotoures where to find Death, not because he is in league with him, as one of them claims, but because he has a mature understanding of living and dying1 which the younger men lack, and knows the traditional teachings about death. This lies behind his resignation to the will of God, behind his desire to return to his mother earth, from which mortal man was born and to which he must return, and behind his teach­ings about the respect which young people should pay to the old, which he backs up with quoted Biblical authority. Yet another of his functions is to act as a contrast to the others and through his simple wisdom to accentuate their arrogant folly. So, for example, his extreme age is stressed in contrast to their youth, his courtesy and mildness in contrast to their rudeness and aggression, and his long search for a final resting-place in contrast to their rash quest to find death of a different kind. It is here, in these rich layers of parallels and contrasts, that some of the most delicious irony is to be found.

ASSIGNMENTS

1. Hold discussions on the points:

• The Pardoner is not portrayed realistically or given any psy­chological depth.

* "The Pardoner's Prologue" and "The Pardoner's Tale" demonstrate Chaucer's ability to treat serious subjects enter­tainingly.

2. Describe the Pardoner's technique for making money.

3. What use is made of irony in "The Pardoner's Tale"!

4. What is the meaning and function of the old man in "The Pardoner's Tale"?

5. Consider some of the possible explanations of the pardoner's offer to the pilgrims at the end of his tale. Which of these do you find the most convincing?

BALLADS

One of the oldest forms of poetry is a special kind of narrative poem known as the ballad. As a rule, ballads are concerned with sharp conflicts and deep human emotion. Once in a while, however, a ballad will deal with the funny side of life. The first ballads were.songs made up by bards and min­strels who travelled from town to town, earning their living by singing their stories to entertain groups of people—common people in town marketplaces, as well as nobles in manor hous­es and castles. Sometimes listeners would join in on the refrain (repeated lines), arid sometimes listeners would dance to the music of the ballad.

The minstrels who composed the early ballads were, as a rule, uneducated persons. As a result, the language of the early bal­lads is quite simple. The ballads were passed on orally from one minstrel to another and from one generation to another. And so, there are often several variations of the same ballad. But even though names and details may differ, the basic story remains unchanged. Interestingly enough, it wasn't until the middle of the 1700s that scholars began to write down the early ballads in the forms in which we read them today.

Ballads differ from ordinary narrative poems in these ways: (1) They usually involve common, everyday people (although there are ballads about nobles, too). (2) They ordinarily deal with physical courage and/or tragic love. (3) They contain little characterization or description; the action moves forward mainly through dialogue. (4) Much of the story is told indirectly; that is, you, the reader, have to fill it in from what the words imply.

A final characteristic that distinguishes ballads from other nar­rative poems is this: Traditionally, ballads tell their stories in bal­lad stanzas. Each stanza has four lines, and the fourth line usual­ly rhymes with the second. As a rule, the rhythm comes from the repetition of one unaccented sound followed by one accented sound. The first and third lines of the ballad stanza usually have

four accented sounds (syllables); the second and fourth lines have three each. Occasionally, to hold the rhythm to the regular beat, you'll need to slur over some sounds or run two syllables togeth­er to make them sound like one.

THE ROBIN HOOD BALLADS

England's favourite hero, Robin Hood, is a partly legendary, part­ly historical character. He lived in about the second half of the 12th century, in the times of King Henry II and his son Richard the Lion-Heart. In those days many of the big castles belonged to robber-barons, who ill-treated the people, stole children and took away the cattle and corn of the villains. If the country-folk resisted, they were either killed by the barons or driven away, and their homes were destroyed. They had no choice but to go out in bands and hide in the woods; then they were declared outlaws (outside the protection of the law).

Great oaks and beeches grew in the forests. The forests abounded in game of all kinds. The Saxons were keen hunters and skilled archers. But in the reign of Henry II the numerous herds of deer that grazed in the open glades by the brooks were proclaimed the king's deer and the immense forests the king's forest. Hunting was prohibited. The laws were always hard on the Saxons and favoured the Normans. The king's foresters allowed the barons and the rich abbots to hunt as much as they pleased. They provided the sheriffs (a sheriff was the chief officer of the king in a country or shire, responsible for administering justice and keeping the peace) of the towns with venison (deer flesh). But if a Saxon was caught drawing a shaft (letting an arrow fly), he was dragged off to prison and one of his ears was cut off.

In Sherwood Forest near Nottingham there was a large band of outlaws led by Robin Hood. He came from a family of Saxon landowners, whose land had been seized by a Norman baron. Their house was not confiscated only because it was thought unworthy of being the residence of a Norman baron. Robin's family were allowed to stay in their home on the condition that they make an annual pay­ment of hogs and hay.

The Norman barons were all engaged in the king's service, which meant they had to fight in some of the king's wars. During the absence of the baron, Robin Hood's family refused to send in their contribution of hogs and provender. When the baron came back he punished them: stole their cattle, burned down their house and drove them off into the forest. Fortunately for the Saxon families their Norman masters were always getting killed, and then the Saxons would return, rebuild their houses and live in peace until the next baron came. This was exactly what happened to Robin's family too.

So Robin had practically grown up in the forest. He had become so skilful an archer that he excelled all others. He also met his love in the forest, the fair maiden Marian. They would have been happy but for the continual fear of the Norman foresters. One day Robin's father was found murdered in the forest. The night after the funeral the sher­iff of Nottingham came with 20 men to arrest Robin in his house. The sheriff obviously meant to clear the country of all the Saxon hunters. Robin defended himself and his arrow pierced the sheriff through the heart. That night Robin burned down his house and went to the for­est again, taking with him all his family and his friends.

The ballads of Robin Hood tell us of his adventures in the for­est as an outlaw. Many Saxons joined him there. They were called the merry men of Robin Hood. They roamed the woods in their green coats killing birds and animals for food, and playing all sorts of tricks on anyone who happened to come near them. Robin's clos­est friends were Little John (he was the tallest of them all) and Alan a Dale. Robin himself is described as a man with a twinkle in the eye, who never robbe'd the poor. He was a tireless enemy of the Norman oppressors and always helped the country-folk in their troubles. Though the sheriff had put a big price on Robin's head, not a Saxon in all Nottingham betrayed him.

ASSIGNMENTS

1. Read the ballad using the glossary. Pay attention to the old words.

ROBIN HOOD AND ALAN A DALE

Come listen to me, you gallants so free, All'you that love mirth for to hear,

And I will you tell of a bold outlaw, That lived in Nottinghamshire.

As Robin Hood in the forest stood, All under the greenwood tree,

There was he ware of a brave young man, As fine as fine might be.

The youngster was clothed in scarlet red.

In scarlet fine and gay, And he did frisk it over the plain,

And chanted a roundelay.

As Robin Hood next morning stood,

Amongst the leaves so gay, There did he espy the same young man

Come drooping along the way.

The scarlet he wore the day before,

It was clean cast away; And every step he fetch a sigh,

"Alack and .well a day!"

Then stepped forth brave Little John,

And Much the miller's son, Which made the young man bend his bow,

When as he saw them come.

"Stand off, stand off!" the young man said,

"What is your will with me?" — "You must come before our master straight.

Under yon greenwood tree."

And when he came bold Robin before,

Robin askt him courteously, "O hast thou any money to spare,

For my merry men and me?"

"1 have no money," the young man said,

"But five shillings and a ring; And that I have kept this seven long years,

To have it at my wedding.

"Yesterday I should have married a maid,

But she is now from me tane, And chosen to be an old knight's delight,

Whereby my poor heart is slain."

"What is thy name?" then said Robin Hood, "Come tell me, without any fail." —

"By the faith of my body," then said the young man, "My name it is Alan a Dale."

"What wilt thou give me," said Robin Hood,

"In ready gold or fee. To help thee to thy true-love again,

And deliver her unto thee?"

"I have no money," then quoth the young man,

"No ready gold nor fee. But I will swear upon a book

Thy true servant for to be."—

"But how many miles to thy true-love?

Come tell me without any guile." — "By the faith of my body," then said the young man,

"it is but five little mile."

Then Robin he hasted over the plain,

He did neither stint nor Iiri, Until he came unto the church.

Where Alan should keep his wedding.

"What dost thou do here?" the Bishop he said,

"1 prithee now tell to me:" "I am a bold harper," quoth Robin Hood,

"And the best in the north countrey."

"0 welcome, О welcome!" the Bishop he said, "That musick best pleaseth me." —

"You shall have no musick," quoth Robin Hood, "Till the bride and the bridegroom 1 see."

With that came in a wealthy knight, Which was both grave and old, And after him a finikin lass, " * Did shine like glistering gold.

"This is no fit match," quoth bold Robin Hood, "That you do seem to make here;

For since we are come unto the church.

The bride she shall chuse her own dear."

Then Robin Hood put his horn to his mouth,

And blew blasts two or three; When four and twenty bowmen bold

Come leaping over the lee.

'And when they came into the churchyard.

Marching all on a row, The first man was Alan a Dale,

To give bold Robin his bow.

"This is thy true-love," Robin he said,

"Young Alan, as 1 hear say; And you shall be married at this same time.

Before we depart away."

"That shall not be," the Bishop he said, "For thy word it shall not stand; • They shall be three times askt in the church, As the law is of our land."

Robin Hood pull'd off the Bishop's coat.

And put it upon Little John; "By the faith of my body," then Robin said,

"This cloath.doth make thee a man."

When Little John went into the quire, The people began for to laugh;

He askt them seven times in the church, Least three should not be enough.

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"Who gives me this maid?" then said Little John;

Quoth Robin, "That do I! And he that doth take her from Alan a Dale

Full dearly he shall her buy."

And thus having ended this merry wedding, The bride lookt as fresh as a queen,

And so they returned to the merry greenwood, Amongst the leaves so green.

Glossary

roundelay — a song with a refrain;

espy — caught sight of;

alack and well a day — alas;

tame — taken;

guile — deceit; trickery;

lin — stop;

finikin — dainty;

three times askt — The marriage intentions of a couple had to be

announced in the church on three separate occasions; quire —- choir; the part of the church v/here the singers sit.