Sir Thopas

Summary

FIT ONE

I. Minstrel opening and introduction of hero (Stanzas 1–2 of Thopas) 657

II. Description of hero (Stanzas 3–4, 6 of Thopas) 662

III. Hero’s activities (Stanzas 5, 7–8 of Thopas) 667

IV. Catalogues of herbs and birds (Stanzas 9–10 of Thopas) 673

V. Hero’s love-longing (Stanzas 11–15 of Thopas) 676

VI. Fight with the giant (Stanzas 16–18 of Thopas) 682

FIT TWO

VII. Minstrel opening (Stanza 19 of Thopas) 689

VIII. Game and glee (Stanzas 20–21 of Thopas) 689

IX. Catalogues of wine, spices (Stanza 22 of Thopas) 692

X. Arming of the hero (Stanzas 23–27 of Thopas) 693

XI. Announcement of end of fit (Stanza 27 of Thopas) 701

FIT THREE

XII. Minstrel opening (Stanza 28 of Thopas) 702

XIII. Catalogue of heroes (Stanza 29 of Thopas) 704

XIV. Riding out (Stanzas 30–31+ of Thopas) 706

APPENDIX

Editions of Middle English Texts (with numbered extracts) 712

Chaucer’s tale of Sir Thopas, the most imitative and derivative of all the Canterbury Tales, has no known single source or analogue, but instead borrows extensively from romances and ballads with echoes from these popular works in virtually every line. Unlike most of the other tales in the Canterbury collection, Sir Thopas is not really a tale at all, but is instead a hodgepodge of common rhetorical devices and popular plot motifs. Filled with conventional diction, paralyzingly bad meter and stereotypical catalogues, the poem must be seen as a parody or satire – a position most scholars have maintained, following the lead of Richard Hurd, who in 1911 claimed Thopas was “Don Quixote in little.” Most also agree that part of the Chaucerian joke is his passing off this potpourri, this deliberately interrupted narrative, as a coherent tale. Major disagreements, however, revolve around questions of who or what is being lampooned. In 1922 Lilian Winstanley argued that the whole poem was “intended as a satire against Philip van Artevelde.” Later, John Manly observed that Chaucer’s contemporaries were accustomed to poke fun at the “efforts of the Flemish bourgeoisie to ape the manners of the English and French aristocracy”and would have “recognized unhesitatingly the object of satire was the ridiculous pretentiousness of these Flemings.”