One of my favorite features of The Canterbury Tales appears when the pilgrims interact with one another. In The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, at least three theobros—the Friar, the Summoner, and the Pardoner—start arguing and making fun of Alison, and none of those three are paragons of virtue either (probably less virtuous than Alison). Alison’s fifth husband is a clerk of Oxford, and when the pilgrim clerk of Oxford tells his tale, he clearly has heard what Alison has had to say.
Implied but not stated explicitly in this post is that Alison is illiterate, so one source of her conflict with the three chauvinists is that they can read and she cannot. Using her experience, Allison chooses to comment on John chapter 4, Jesus’s visit with the Samaritan woman. Alison makes occasional errors about the biblical text, such as confusing Mark and John (line 145) and wondering why the Samaritan woman’s fifth husband wasn’t a husband (lines 14-22). What’s notable about these errors is that they are minor, and that they are the kinds of errors one might make if one’s encounter with the biblical text is auditory—by hearing. Taking Alison’s prologue as a whole, she has heard plenty of the Bible read, and we shouldn’t confuse illiteracy with unintelligence. Experience is Alison’s authority, but so is the word she has heard, such as when she cites the apostle Paul that it is better to marry than to burn.
(As an aside, oppressive people, including medieval chauvinists and Southern plantation owners, have erroneously believed that they control intelligence when they limit literacy.)
It's interesting to go back to the Samaritan woman story after reading The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. Jesus gets all of the men out of the conversation because if they were present, they would probably do exactly as they do when they return—demean the woman. One to one, the woman wants her intelligence respected, so she asks her question about where is the right place to worship. Jesus answers her question by taking her question to a more interesting answer. When Jesus interacts with the Samaritan woman, his respect is love, and he gains one of the most effective evangelists within the gospels.
Such great comments, Jack! Thank you! In an earlier post we discussed the interactions between the pilgrims (and what a delight they are!). I didn’t have time to cover that (and so much more).
Jack, I so appreciate your comments about literacy and intelligence, really important that they are not equated or confused. To use the lack of literacy as a tool for coercion and marginalisation is truly dreadful. And what you write about the encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4 in the light of the Wife of Bath is really very helpful - someone who has been mis-characterised, I believe, in far too many sermons. I think John presents her as a genuine seeker after truth, with a barrel-load of shame on her back and likely not put there by herself (it's more likely that she was used and abused by men, not someone who had played the field). I love your point about the Lord speaking to her without the other men present.
Who'd have thought there could be so much in it?? Certainly not the teenage me who so struggled with its Middle English all those years ago! Thank you so much, Karen, for the richness of this installment. I find myself wondering how much was intended by Chaucer as novel and perhaps even subversive in his day - for example, the focus on the sufficiency of personal experience. How much is he, as an author, wielding his (potent/potential) authority through his text? She's such a larger-than-life character that I'd have a hard time thinking he was giving us this merely by some kind of happy accident. Did the reaction to the Tales at the time it was first published recognise what he was doing in this part of the work?
Another observation I want to make is about authorial intention. It’s almost impossible to speculate about intention apart from an author’s other works, statements, commentary, etc. I think the body of Chaucer’s works and the record of the literary context shows Chaucer was, at the very least, very self-aware of what he was doing as an artist. With that said, all great artists have a bit of the “prophet” in them: they can read the times and see things about their present and tell the truth and sometimes that may happen out of sheer instinct and intuition rather than conscious intention. That’s my view, anyway.
Ah, good old authorial intention - not just an issue in scriptural interpretation then! I like that combo both of definite intent (on Chaucer's part) and the space you leave for "instinct and intuition" without conscious intent. That seems super important to me and a great way to frame it.
Richard, great questions! Jack’s reply is very helpful. I’d add also that Chaucer was drawing on a rich, existing literary tradition. (There is a ton of scholarship and documentation of this.) I will get into a little bit of this next week. Suffice it to say that Chaucer was both drawing from this tradition and brilliantly challenging some aspects of it. But in ways, as Jack states, that his primary audience would get and appreciate, if only in a *wink wink* way.
At some point, I will have to bring up Chaucer’s Retraction, which complicates all the complications again!
A difficulty with answering this question involves time: When Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, it wasn't published. Gutenberg hadn't invented the press yet. Chaucer's first audience would have been members of the nobility, for whom he worked as a sort of records keeper. What we have today for The Canterbury Tales comes from manuscript fragments, and though there is a general agreement in their arrangement, that arrangement was the work of scholars.
My guess is that the nobility appreciated the Wife of Bath with amused condescension. That violence Karen observes in the text could easily have been met with a "serves her right" from that crowd. But there's too much we don't know about the reception of Chaucer's time.
I can say more definitely that 200 years later, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Chaucer was regarded as the father of English poetry and was appreciated for his characterizations. If you ever have occasion to read Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen, his spelling was intentionally archaic for his own time, to bring Chaucer to mind for his readers.
I went looking for some help understanding the history around The Canterbury Tales and found this translation of the tales with a helpful introduction on audible. Thought I would share 😊
Listening to the translation I was brought up short when Christ was described as ‘a maid’. I have only ever heard women described as ‘maids’ just as you don’t often hear make saints described as virgins. Was this use of language more common then?
The meaning of "maid" has indeed changed over time. Its early meaning was "an unmarried, and thus sexually inexperienced person, female or male." Contemporary to The Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is written in a more difficult dialect of Middle English; I have read it only in translation, but I believe Sir Gawain is referred to as a maid. By the time of Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night, Sebastian refers to himself as a maid and a man--the meaning was changing but the old meaning was still known. Hope this helps.
Thanks, Jack! It’s interesting to think of how that word has been feminized. If “maid” once meant “virgin” (whether male or female) and came to refer only to females, it parallels the more modern emphasis on female purity and relative lack of that importance for men. Some accounts grace that division to growing wealth, inheritance, importance of heirs being blood related. Just stray thoughts. Not sure if this is a clear connection or not.
Thank you Karen for your insightful storytelling of this fascinating Chaucer’s storytelling of the Wife of Bath! So many intriguing lines mirror womanhood in the mid evil and modern eras. By imagining the Canterbury Tales were orated to the illiterate audience of the era in verses, I feel so thrilled and chilled. Love to you, Karen! Wonderful work 💓
Thank you, Kyomi! So much richness in this work! It is impossible to do it justice. But just loving attention to it is a start. And as you say, it reveals so much about us today all these years later. This is the gift of art!
One of my favorite features of The Canterbury Tales appears when the pilgrims interact with one another. In The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, at least three theobros—the Friar, the Summoner, and the Pardoner—start arguing and making fun of Alison, and none of those three are paragons of virtue either (probably less virtuous than Alison). Alison’s fifth husband is a clerk of Oxford, and when the pilgrim clerk of Oxford tells his tale, he clearly has heard what Alison has had to say.
Implied but not stated explicitly in this post is that Alison is illiterate, so one source of her conflict with the three chauvinists is that they can read and she cannot. Using her experience, Allison chooses to comment on John chapter 4, Jesus’s visit with the Samaritan woman. Alison makes occasional errors about the biblical text, such as confusing Mark and John (line 145) and wondering why the Samaritan woman’s fifth husband wasn’t a husband (lines 14-22). What’s notable about these errors is that they are minor, and that they are the kinds of errors one might make if one’s encounter with the biblical text is auditory—by hearing. Taking Alison’s prologue as a whole, she has heard plenty of the Bible read, and we shouldn’t confuse illiteracy with unintelligence. Experience is Alison’s authority, but so is the word she has heard, such as when she cites the apostle Paul that it is better to marry than to burn.
(As an aside, oppressive people, including medieval chauvinists and Southern plantation owners, have erroneously believed that they control intelligence when they limit literacy.)
It's interesting to go back to the Samaritan woman story after reading The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. Jesus gets all of the men out of the conversation because if they were present, they would probably do exactly as they do when they return—demean the woman. One to one, the woman wants her intelligence respected, so she asks her question about where is the right place to worship. Jesus answers her question by taking her question to a more interesting answer. When Jesus interacts with the Samaritan woman, his respect is love, and he gains one of the most effective evangelists within the gospels.
Such great comments, Jack! Thank you! In an earlier post we discussed the interactions between the pilgrims (and what a delight they are!). I didn’t have time to cover that (and so much more).
You have added richly here. Thank you!
Jack, I so appreciate your comments about literacy and intelligence, really important that they are not equated or confused. To use the lack of literacy as a tool for coercion and marginalisation is truly dreadful. And what you write about the encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4 in the light of the Wife of Bath is really very helpful - someone who has been mis-characterised, I believe, in far too many sermons. I think John presents her as a genuine seeker after truth, with a barrel-load of shame on her back and likely not put there by herself (it's more likely that she was used and abused by men, not someone who had played the field). I love your point about the Lord speaking to her without the other men present.
I agree, Richard: Jesus’ words to her apart from the men is laden with so much significance.
Who'd have thought there could be so much in it?? Certainly not the teenage me who so struggled with its Middle English all those years ago! Thank you so much, Karen, for the richness of this installment. I find myself wondering how much was intended by Chaucer as novel and perhaps even subversive in his day - for example, the focus on the sufficiency of personal experience. How much is he, as an author, wielding his (potent/potential) authority through his text? She's such a larger-than-life character that I'd have a hard time thinking he was giving us this merely by some kind of happy accident. Did the reaction to the Tales at the time it was first published recognise what he was doing in this part of the work?
Another observation I want to make is about authorial intention. It’s almost impossible to speculate about intention apart from an author’s other works, statements, commentary, etc. I think the body of Chaucer’s works and the record of the literary context shows Chaucer was, at the very least, very self-aware of what he was doing as an artist. With that said, all great artists have a bit of the “prophet” in them: they can read the times and see things about their present and tell the truth and sometimes that may happen out of sheer instinct and intuition rather than conscious intention. That’s my view, anyway.
Ah, good old authorial intention - not just an issue in scriptural interpretation then! I like that combo both of definite intent (on Chaucer's part) and the space you leave for "instinct and intuition" without conscious intent. That seems super important to me and a great way to frame it.
Richard, great questions! Jack’s reply is very helpful. I’d add also that Chaucer was drawing on a rich, existing literary tradition. (There is a ton of scholarship and documentation of this.) I will get into a little bit of this next week. Suffice it to say that Chaucer was both drawing from this tradition and brilliantly challenging some aspects of it. But in ways, as Jack states, that his primary audience would get and appreciate, if only in a *wink wink* way.
At some point, I will have to bring up Chaucer’s Retraction, which complicates all the complications again!
Wait, what?? There's a retraction?? Alison says sorry for hitting Jankyn on the nose?? Please say it ain't so! :)
Haha! No. It’s a retraction for his entire work, sort of. I am going to have to write about this!
A difficulty with answering this question involves time: When Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, it wasn't published. Gutenberg hadn't invented the press yet. Chaucer's first audience would have been members of the nobility, for whom he worked as a sort of records keeper. What we have today for The Canterbury Tales comes from manuscript fragments, and though there is a general agreement in their arrangement, that arrangement was the work of scholars.
My guess is that the nobility appreciated the Wife of Bath with amused condescension. That violence Karen observes in the text could easily have been met with a "serves her right" from that crowd. But there's too much we don't know about the reception of Chaucer's time.
I can say more definitely that 200 years later, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Chaucer was regarded as the father of English poetry and was appreciated for his characterizations. If you ever have occasion to read Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen, his spelling was intentionally archaic for his own time, to bring Chaucer to mind for his readers.
I went looking for some help understanding the history around The Canterbury Tales and found this translation of the tales with a helpful introduction on audible. Thought I would share 😊
https://www.audible.com/pd/B002V1BWX0?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=player_overflow
Oh, thank you! Poetry is meant to be heard, so listening is something I highly recommend along with reading.
I have a question:
Listening to the translation I was brought up short when Christ was described as ‘a maid’. I have only ever heard women described as ‘maids’ just as you don’t often hear make saints described as virgins. Was this use of language more common then?
If I may . . .
The meaning of "maid" has indeed changed over time. Its early meaning was "an unmarried, and thus sexually inexperienced person, female or male." Contemporary to The Canterbury Tales, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is written in a more difficult dialect of Middle English; I have read it only in translation, but I believe Sir Gawain is referred to as a maid. By the time of Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night, Sebastian refers to himself as a maid and a man--the meaning was changing but the old meaning was still known. Hope this helps.
Thanks, Jack! It’s interesting to think of how that word has been feminized. If “maid” once meant “virgin” (whether male or female) and came to refer only to females, it parallels the more modern emphasis on female purity and relative lack of that importance for men. Some accounts grace that division to growing wealth, inheritance, importance of heirs being blood related. Just stray thoughts. Not sure if this is a clear connection or not.
You may! Thank you fir explaining something that puzzled me
Thank you Karen for your insightful storytelling of this fascinating Chaucer’s storytelling of the Wife of Bath! So many intriguing lines mirror womanhood in the mid evil and modern eras. By imagining the Canterbury Tales were orated to the illiterate audience of the era in verses, I feel so thrilled and chilled. Love to you, Karen! Wonderful work 💓
Thank you, Kyomi! So much richness in this work! It is impossible to do it justice. But just loving attention to it is a start. And as you say, it reveals so much about us today all these years later. This is the gift of art!