THE CANTERBURY TALES
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| THE CANTERBURY TALES by: Geoffrey Chauce |
Themes
The Pervasiveness of Courtly Love
The phrase “courtly love” refers to a set of ideas
about love that was enormously influential on the literature and culture of the
Middle Ages. Beginning with the Troubadour poets of southern France in the
eleventh century, poets throughout Europe promoted the notions that true love
only exists outside of marriage; that true love may be idealized and spiritual,
and may exist without ever being physically consummated; and that a man becomes
the servant of the lady he loves. Together with these basic premises, courtly
love encompassed a number of minor motifs. One of these is the idea that love
is a torment or a disease, and that when a man is in love he cannot sleep or
eat, and therefore he undergoes physical changes, sometimes to the point of
becoming unrecognizable. Although very few people’s lives resembled the courtly
love ideal in any way, these themes and motifs were extremely popular and
widespread in medieval and Renaissance literature and culture. They were
particularly popular in the literature and culture that were part of royal and
noble courts.
Courtly love motifs first appear in The Canterbury Tales
with the description of the Squire in the General Prologue. The Squire’s role
in society is exactly that of his father the Knight, except for his lower
status, but the Squire is very different from his father in that he
incorporates the ideals of courtly love into his interpretation of his own
role. Indeed, the Squire is practically a parody of the traditional courtly
lover. The description of the Squire establishes a pattern that runs throughout
the General Prologue, and The Canterbury Tales: characters whose roles are
defined by their religious or economic functions integrate the cultural ideals
of courtly love into their dress, their behavior, and the tales they tell, in
order to give a slightly different twist to their roles. Another such character
is the Prioress, a nun who sports a “Love Conquers All” brooch.
The Importance of Company
Many of Chaucer’s characters end their stories by
wishing the rest of the “compaignye,” or company, well. The Knight ends with
“God save al this faire compaignye” (3108), and the Reeve with “God, that
sitteth heighe in magestee, / Save al this compaignye, grete and smale!”
(4322–4323). Company literally signifies the entire group of people, but
Chaucer’s deliberate choice of this word over other words for describing masses
of people, like the Middle English words for party, mixture, or group, points
us to another major theme that runs throughout The Canterbury Tales. Company
derives from two Latin words, com, or “with,” and pane, or “bread.” Quite
literally, a company is a group of people with whom one eats, or breaks bread.
The word for good friend, or “companion,” also comes from these words. But, in
a more abstract sense, company had an economic connotation. It was the term
designated to connote a group of people engaged in a particular business, as it
is used today.
The functioning and well-being of medieval
communities, not to mention their overall happiness, depended upon groups of
socially bonded workers in towns and guilds, known informally as companies. If
workers in a guild or on a feudal manor were not getting along well, they would
not produce good work, and the economy would suffer. They would be unable to
bargain, as a modern union does, for better working conditions and life
benefits. Eating together was a way for guild members to cement friendships,
creating a support structure for their working community. Guilds had their own
special dining halls, where social groups got together to bond, be merry, and
form supportive alliances. When the peasants revolted against their feudal
lords in 1381, they were able to organize themselves well precisely because
they had formed these strong social ties through their companies.
Company was a leveling concept—an idea created by the
working classes that gave them more power and took away some of the nobility’s
power and tyranny. The company of pilgrims on the way to Canterbury is not a
typical example of a tightly networked company, although the five Guildsmen do
represent this kind of fraternal union. The pilgrims come from different parts
of society—the court, the Church, villages, the feudal manor system. To prevent
discord, the pilgrims create an informal company, united by their jobs as
storytellers, and by the food and drink the host provides. As far as class distinctions
are concerned, they do form a company in the sense that none of them belongs to
the nobility, and most have working professions, whether that work be sewing
and marriage (the Wife of Bath), entertaining visitors with gourmet food (the
Franklin), or tilling the earth (the Plowman).
The Corruption of the Church
By the late fourteenth century, the Catholic Church,
which governed England, Ireland, and the entire continent of Europe, had become
extremely wealthy. The cathedrals that grew up around shrines to saints’ relics
were incredibly expensive to build, and the amount of gold that went into
decorating them and equipping them with candlesticks and reliquaries (boxes to
hold relics that were more jewel-encrusted than kings’ crowns) surpassed the
riches in the nobles’ coffers. In a century of disease, plague, famine, and
scarce labor, the sight of a church ornamented with unused gold seemed unfair
to some people, and the Church’s preaching against greed suddenly seemed
hypocritical, considering its great displays of material wealth. Distaste for
the excesses of the Church triggered stories and anecdotes about greedy,
irreligious churchmen who accepted bribes, bribed others, and indulged
themselves sensually and gastronomically, while ignoring the poor famished
peasants begging at their doors.
The religious figures Chaucer represents in The
Canterbury Tales all deviate in one way or another from what was traditionally
expected of them. Generally, their conduct corresponds to common medieval
stereotypes, but it is difficult to make any overall statement about Chaucer’s
position because his narrator is so clearly biased toward some characters—the
Monk, for example—and so clearly biased against others, such as the Pardoner.
Additionally, the characters are not simply satirical versions of their roles;
they are individuals and cannot simply be taken as typical of their
professions.
The Monk, Prioress, and Friar were all members of the
clerical estate. The Monk and the Prioress live in a monastery and a convent,
respectively. Both are characterized as figures who seem to prefer the
aristocratic to the devotional life. The Prioress’s bejeweled rosary seems more
like a love token than something expressing her devotion to Christ, and her
dainty mannerisms echo the advice given by Guillaume de Loris in the French
romance Roman de la Rose, about how women could make themselves attractive to
men. The Monk enjoys hunting, a pastime of the nobility, while he disdains
study and confinement. The Friar was a member of an order of mendicants, who
made their living by traveling around and begging, and accepting money to hear
confession. Friars were often seen as threatening and had the reputation of
being lecherous, as the Wife of Bath describes in the opening of her tale. The Summoner
and the Friar are at each other’s throats so frequently in The Canterbury Tales
because they were in fierce competition in Chaucer’s time—summoners, too,
extorted money from people.
Overall, the narrator seems to harbor much more
hostility for the ecclesiastical officials (the Summoner and the Pardoner) than
he does for the clerics. For example, the Monk and the Pardoner possess several
traits in common, but the narrator presents them in very different ways. The
narrator remembers the shiny baldness of the Monk’s head, which suggests that
the Monk may have ridden without a hood, but the narrator uses the fact that
the Pardoner rides without a hood as proof of his shallow character. The Monk
and the Pardoner both give their own opinions of themselves to the narrator—the
narrator affirms the Monk’s words by repeating them, and his own response, but
the narrator mocks the Pardoner for his opinion of himself.
Symbols
Springtime
The Canterbury Tales opens in April, at the height of
spring. The birds are chirping, the flowers blossoming, and people long in
their hearts to go on pilgrimages, which combine travel, vacation, and
spiritual renewal. The springtime symbolizes rebirth and fresh beginnings, and
is thus appropriate for the beginning of Chaucer’s text. Springtime also evokes
erotic love, as evidenced by the moment when Palamon first sees Emelye
gathering fresh flowers to make garlands in honor of May. The Squire, too,
participates in this symbolism. His devotion to courtly love is compared to the
freshness of the month of May.
Clothing
In the General Prologue, the description of garments,
in addition to the narrator’s own shaky recollections, helps to define each
character. In a sense, the clothes symbolize what lies beneath the surface of
each personality. The Physician’s love of wealth reveals itself most clearly to
us in the rich silk and fur of his gown. The Squire’s youthful vanity is
symbolized by the excessive floral brocade on his tunic. The Merchant’s forked
beard could symbolize his duplicity, at which Chaucer only hints.
Physiognomy
Physiognomy was a science that judged a person’s
temperament and character based on his or her anatomy. Physiognomy plays a
significant role in Chaucer’s descriptions of the pilgrims in the General
Prologue. The most exaggerated facial features are those of the peasants. The
Miller represents the stereotypical peasant physiognomy most clearly: round and
ruddy, with a wart on his nose, the Miller appears rough and therefore suited
to rough, simple work. The Pardoner’s glaring eyes and limp hair illustrate his
fraudulence.
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