Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)
About the author
Chaucer was born in London into a wine merchant family with rising fortunes. In 1357 Chaucer served at the court as a page. During the Hundred Years’ War, he went to France with the English army and was taken prisoner there. After he returned to England in 1360, he married Philippa, a maid of honour to the Queen and sister of the Duke of Lancaster, who later became his patron. For the next 10 years diplomatic errands took him to the Continent, which proved to be very important to him. Besides these diplomatic missions, Chaucer had other public employment. He was once made Controller of Customs in 1374, and elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Kent. With these positions, he still experienced some years of poverty and once wrote Complaint to His Empty Purse. He died in 1400 and was the first writer to be buried in what has since become known as the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.
Chaucer’s literary career is traditionally divided into three periods, corresponding to the three periods of his life. In the first period (1360-1372), Chaucer was chiefly influenced by the French literature. He imitated French poetry and wrote The Book of the Duchess (1369-1370). His translation of French Roman de la Rose (The Raumaunt of the Rose ) was finished in this period. In the second period (1372-1385), when he wrote under the influence of the great literary geniuses of early Renaissance in Italy －Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio, he finished Troylus and Criseyde(1380-86), The House of Fame(1372-80), and Legend of Good Women (1380-86). The third period covers the last fifteen years of his life. It was in this period that Chaucer produced his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales, a work of full maturity free from any dominant foreign influence. For the first time, he was addressing himself not to the court but to a wider reading public.
The Canterbury Tales
Commentary
The Canterbury Tales is written for the most part in heroic couplet. The whole poem is a collection of tales strung together with a simple plan. On a spring evening, the poet, moved by the passion for wandering, drops himself at the Tabard Inn. Here he meets29 other pilgrims ready for a journey of 60 miles on horseback to Canterbury. Chaucer joins this company. At the suggestion of the host of the inn, they agree to beguile the journey by story-telling. Each is to tell two stories going and two returning. The best storyteller shall be treated with a fine supper at the general expense at the end. The host is to be the judge of the contest. There should have been 120 stories, but Chaucer only lived to write 24 of them.
The main Prologue is especially interesting, in which the author draws vivid sketches of typical medieval figures from different walks of life. He introduces the profession, appearance, and characters of these pilgrims one by one, with mild satire and humour, and through this description and the stories they tell, he presents before the reader a panoramic view of his contemporary society, with the exception of the higher nobility and the impoverished. The prologue and most of the tales are written in heroic couplet.
Our selection contains the opening lines of the Prologue and the description of the Prioress in modernized form.
The Canterbury Tales
(Excerpt)
When the sweet showers of April fall and shoot
Down through the through of March to pierce the root,
Bathing every vein1 in liquid power
From which there springs the engendering2 of the flower,
When also Zephyrus3 with his sweet breath
Exhales an air in every grove and heath
Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram4 has run,
And the small fowls are making melody
That sleep away the might with open eye
(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)
The people long to go on pilgrimages
And palmers5 long to seek the stranger strands6
Of far-off saints, hallowed in sundry7 lands,
And specially, from every shire’s end
In England, down to Canterbury they wend8
To seek the holy blissful martyr9, quick
In giving help to them when they were sick.
It happened in that season that one day
In Southwark10, at The Tabard11, as I lay
Ready to go on pilgrimage and start
For Canterbury, most devout at heart,
At night there came into that hostelry12
Some nine and twenty in a company
Of sundry folk happening then to fall
In fellowship, and they were pilgrims all
That towards Canterbury meant to ride.
The rooms and stables of the inn were wide,
They made us easy, 13all was of the best.
And shortly, when the sun had gone to rest,
By speaking to them all upon the trip
I was admitted to their fellowship
And promised to rise early and take the way
To Canterbury, as you heard me say.
There was also a Nun, a Prioress,
Simple her way of smiling was and coy.
Her greatest oath was only "By St. Loy!"14
And she was known as Madam Eglantine,
And well she sang a service15, with a fine
In toning through her nose, as was most seemly,
And she spoke daintily in French, extremely,
After the school of Stratford-at-the-Bowe16;
French in the Paris style she did not know.
At meant her manners were well taught withal;
No morsels from her lips did she let fall,
Nor dipped her fingers in the sauce too deep;
But she could carry a morsel up and keep
That smallest drop from falling on her breast.
For courtliness17 she had a special zest.
And she would wipe her upper lip so clean
That not a trace of grease was to be seen
Upon the cup when she had drunk; to eat,
She reached her hand sedately for the meat.
She certainly was very entertaining,
Pleasant and friendly in her ways, and straining
To counterfeit courtly kind of grace,
A stately bearing fitting to her place,
And to seem dignified in all her dealings.
As for her sympathies and tender feelings,
She was so charitably solicitous
She used to weep if she saw a mouse
Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bleeding.
And she had little dogs she would be feeding
With roasted flesh, or milk, or fine white bread.
Sorely she wept if one of them were dead
Or someone took a stick and made it smart18;
She was all sentiment and tender heart.
Her mouth was very small, but soft and red,
And certainly she had a well-shaped head,
Almost a span19 across the brows, I own;
She was indeed by no means undergrown.
Her cloak, I noticed, had a graceful charm.
She wore a coral trinket on her arm,
A set of beads, the gaudies20 tricked21 in green,
Whence hung a golden brooch of brightest sheen
On which there first was graven a crowned A,
And lower, Amor vincit omnia. 22
Notes:
1. vein: the rib of a leaf.
2. engendering: springing up.
3. Zephyrus: the west wind.
4. Ram: one of the signs of the Zodiac. The sun is supposed to enter the Ram late in March and to leave it beyond the middle of April. So “the young sun/ His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run” refers to the time after the eleventh of April.
5. palmers: pilgrims to foreign shores.
6. the stranger strands: the foreign shores.
7. sundry: diverse, different.
8. wend (archaic) : go.
9. the holy blissful martyr: here refers to St. Thomas a Bechet who, upon being made the Archbishop of Canterbury, resisted the efforts of King Henry Ⅱ to deprive the church courts of part of their power. As a result of the quarrel, four of Henry’s knights rode to Canterbury and murdered Thomas in the cathedral. Thomas was later considered a martyr and worshiped as a saint, and his tomb at Canterbury became one of the most famous shrines in England.
10. Southwark: a suburb of London.
11. The Tabard: an inn at Southwark.
12. hostelry: an inn, a lodging house.
13. made us easy: made us feel comfortable.
14. “By St. Loy” : a very mild oath.
15. sang a service: here referring to the singing of a hymn.
16. Straford-atte-Bowe: a monastery near London.
16. courtliness: courtly behaviour, refined manners adopted by courtiers and ladies of the court.
17. made it smart: gave it sharp pain.
18. a span: the maximum distance between the tips of the thumb and the little finger.
19. gaudies: every eleventh bead upon which the Lord’s Prayer is to be said.
20. tricked: decorated, adorned.
21. Amor vincit omnia (Latin) : Love conquers all.
Questions
1. How does the author paint the setting of his story in the first 18 lines of the Prologue?
2. Why does the author give such a detailed account of the Prioress ’s appearance and manners?
3. How do you understand “Amor vincit omnia ”?