The Canterbury Tales
It’s a gift to historians and history lovers.
It presents a window into an unknown world. It presents a sketch of the people who so seldom (if ever) appear in primary sources. A monk, a nun’s priest, a manciple, a reeve, a miller, a tavern host and, inevitably a prominent writer of the day.
It is the volume known as The Canterbury Tales.
Ellesmere Chaucer, mssEL 26 C 9, folio 153v, Tale of Melibee with portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Written in the fourteenth century The Tales are still widely read and still raising not so much a laugh as a guffaw.
With their reputation for bawdiness and lots of ‘rumpy pumpy’, The Canterbury Tales have given Chaucer a reputation for being a comic writer in the style of Benny Hill. If there is a tavern for fictional characters to drink ale and chat it would be easy to picture Benny Hill’s fastest milkman in the west sharing a pint with Chaucer’s cook.
But and it’s a big but, there is a very dark side to many of The Tales.
Much of Chaucer’s writing appears almost in the style of investigative journalism as much as entertainment. It is part of his genius that he combines humour with social comment.
Written during the reign of King Richard II who is usually referred to as a disastrous monarch, we can regard The Canterbury Tales as evidence of just how widespread corruption was. In The Prologue, Chaucer makes it clear that The Pardoner’s relics are nothing more than pigs’ bones. Although he claims to have come straight from Rome, it is clear that his mission in life is to extract money from the gullible.
Chaucer describes him as ‘a mare’ which may be a slang term for homosexual. When it comes to finding evidence for same sex relationships in the medieval period, we are so starved of primary source material we are left clutching at whatever tiny fragments we can find.
The Pardoner in the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
It may be a mistake to draw too many conclusions from one single word but we can certainly share Chaucer’s low opinion of such a charlatan.
He is an unlikeable character who admits that he uses the Biblical text of ‘greed is the root all evil’ but this refers to his own sinful life.
Ironically it is The Pardoner’s Tale which gives a chilling insight into the shadow that death cast over daily life during the years of the Black Death.
Three youths seek to find the figure of Death who has robbed them of so many of their friends. Driven by greed they do, indeed, find death but not in the way they were seeking…
The Summoner is described in his Prologue as being ‘as hot and lecherous as a sparrow’. His physical appearance is unpleasant. Already, we, the audience, dislike him.
It is The Friar who tells a tale in which a summoner is so corrupt that he is pulled down to hell. In the tale, the summoner meets a demon, a figure dressed in green. It is the summoner who seeks to take money from an old widow on false charges and the demon, who admits that he works for the devil himself, who achieves justice. The Friar raises the question of whether words have power if spoken without meaning. This is the kind of question which we can still debate at great length.
The Friar argues that something said without intention has no value. Does this mean that all those prayers mumbled by rote are simply empty? Chaucer may be calling into question the worthiness of the friar’s own work. He is described as being better acquainted with inn keepers than with the poor people and lepers that he is meant to be helping. As a man of the church he seems to be a little lacking in compassion.
The Monk, who is described as being a somewhat rotund fellow, surprisingly, tells a story which ends with the might of the Roman Empire restoring balance by bringing down a powerful woman in the Amazon warrior mould.
The Monk in the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
We may have expected a Biblical story from the monk but he takes us to ancient Rome where our heroine Zenobia escapes to the wilds. An excellent archer and wrestler she succumbs to the power of love but after the death of her husband she continues to rule the empire they created. She is defeated by Caesar and paraded through the streets of Rome wearing all her finery. Civilisation is restored and the wilderness abandoned. The natural order is maintained as an Empress is brought down.
The message is clearly that women are intended to be under the control of men but we are left wondering why the monk didn’t tell a Biblical story to illustrate his point.
The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale continues the theme of men of the cloth being a long way from the concept of renouncing material wealth as envisaged by Saint Augustine.
Latecomers to the pilgrimage, the Canon and his Yeoman are not described in The Prologue but we know from the Yeoman’s own words that he is poor and so much in debt that he will never be able to repay. Despite the Canon’s attempts to silence him, the Yeoman tells the pilgrims that the Canon is an alchemist who sells counterfeit coins as gold. The Canon does the only sensible thing at this point and rides away, leaving the Yeoman free to tell about his master’s search for the Philosopher’s Stone.
Chaucer’s point is made again. People of the Church are just as greedy as the flock they claim to support. They also seem to have the same elastic morals as the rest of us.
With The Shipman’s Tale we are entertained with a cheerful story of a bored housewife who seeks a diversion with a young monk. No real harm is done and our sympathy is with the lovers. That the Shipman can openly tell a tale of a monk having an adulteress relationship with a married lady suggests that our fourteenth century audience could easily accommodate this idea and would not find it particularly shocking.
With the Prioress we hopefully expect a story of Christian forgiveness and love. Sadly, we are to be disappointed. The Prioress tells a tale of a Christian child who was murdered by the Jews. So devout was the boy that, even after death with his slit throat, he continues to sing praises to the blessed virgin. The Prioress makes her case against the Jewish people clear. In their hearts dwells the wasps’ nest of Satan himself.
For historians it gives a clear image of just how deep rooted anti Jewish feeling really was. The Prioress begins her tale by stating that the Jews living in the ghetto make their living through the sin of usury.
This is a tale which we, in the twenty-first century, are uncomfortable with and it’s certainly not one which anyone is likely to tell at a storytelling evening. It does, however, give us clear insight into the thoughts and feelings of people in medieval times.
The Second Nun’s Tale is much more what we may be expecting from a Bride of Christ. She tells a familiar story of a saint, Cecilia, who refuses her husband’s orders to worship the pagan Roman gods. Inevitably she is martyred but this proves difficult as she is reluctant to pass into death, surviving as she does for three days after she was beheaded. The Roman gods are presented here as being very definitely of the ‘bad’ variety. The Nun may be taking a swipe at some of the other pilgrims who have a working knowledge of ancient Rome.
The Franklin in the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
The Merchant’s Tale depicts Phoebus, god of the sun (better known to us by his Greek name of Apollo). That the Merchant doesn’t feel the need to explain this to the pilgrims suggests that he is confident they will all recognise Phoebus’ name.
The Franklin tells a tale in which a druid appears in Brittany, working magic. There is, in fact, a logical explanation for some of his magic. If the druids really did study the night sky they would have been able to predict the rhythm of the tides and would have known when an unusually high tide would have made sailing over a rock festooned harbour would be safe. This does suggest that druids, if not still present in medieval England, were at least remembered.
Similarly, the Man of Law’s Tale is a very long one (we would expect nothing else of a lawyer) which features people worshipping the old Heathen gods in the very north of England. His tale is set many years ago but does give us a clue that the existence of the pre-Christian pantheon was remembered.
For storytellers this is a pleasing tale, featuring the well worn images of a person adrift in a rudderless boat which, of-course, lands exactly where it needs to for the story to play out.
It also has a theme of Muslims being very definitely the baddies with an Empress arranging for Christians to be massacred. It is inevitable that there will be a mention of Islam as the enemy. After all, the Canterbury Tales are begun by the Knight who has served in the Crusades.
The Nun has a priest travelling with her. His story is an uplifting one with a clear message. This is a pleasing tale for us, used as we are to talking animals and cunning foxes. The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is a traditional one from France. It is a story which seems to have more in common with Aesop’s Fables than to the rest of the Canterbury Tales.
The Nun's Priest in the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
The moral is a simple one. Those who boast, like the rooster, are putting themselves in danger. Modesty is a worthy virtue. Unusually in the storytelling tradition, the fox is outwitted so the rooster lives to crow for another dawn.
The opening lines describing a widow living with her daughters in a country cottage, growing their own vegetables and tending their own hens paints a picture of the rural idyll. It is an image we all wish to believe. Certainly there seems to be little mention in Chaucer’s work of the ever present threat of hunger which hallmarks the nineteenth century Brothers Grimm’s collection. In The Prologue only The Pardoner and The Clerk are described as being thin. Most of the pilgrims are presented as being somewhat stout as certainly enjoying their ale.
For re-enactors and storytellers it is the ever popular Miller’s Tale and Reeve’s Tale which are the most likely to be told. As re-enactment moves away from battles towards living history, the pilgrims and their tales have become a treasure chest into which we can gleefully dip. Although we think of Chaucer as the grandfather of English literature his tales were intended to be spoken aloud, to be told and not to be read.
Storytelling is enjoying something of a revival at the moment with clubs meeting (invariably in pubs as the age old association of stories and ale remains) and sane (allegedly) adults tell old tales from around the globe. Many people are reluctant to have a go at storytelling. The most frequently stated reason is that ‘I wouldn’t remember it all’. The great thing about telling stories is that you don’t need to.
Storytelling isn’t acting. Tellers remember the outline of a tale and then simply tell it. This really isn’t the same as reciting. This is something humanity has always done, anywhere and anywhen.
If you do forget the next piece of the story, take a swig from the mug of water (or perhaps something stronger) you have at your side. Your audience will think your throat is dry and it gives a few seconds for the next few lines to appear at the front of your memory and find their way to your tongue.
Re-enactors can have great fun with this. Your audience will forgive you if you stumble a little. In medieval England it’s likely that anyone could tell a tale. Our pilgrims weren’t professional entertainers. They were an odd assortment of folk but they all rise to the Host’s challenge of telling a tale.
If you are a re-enactor and you feel drawn to telling a few stories at events (round the fire is a good place for this) you may like to drop in to a local club and listen to a few people before having a go yourself. Once you have got over that initial butterfly in the stomach moment you’ll find that telling a story is a natural thing to do. You’re not the father of the bride giving an over rehearsed speech, you’re just doing what we all do all the time. Talking.
Treading in the footsteps of Chaucer’s pilgrims as they tell stories is an essential piece of medieval history. If you are serious about recreating the past then bringing the Tales to life is a fun way of enacting every day life.
Our ancestors had a sense of humour that we all recognise. Why not bring their form of entertainment into our digital age?