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XI.—The Debate on Marriage in the Canterbury Tales
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Scholars have always recognized that there is a large degree of appropriateness in the assignment of the various Canterbury Tales to their respective tellers, and in a few cases an appropriateness also to the situation. Recently there have been determined efforts to extend the application of these principles as far as possible. Conspicuous among these is the position asserted with great emphasis and confidence by Professor Kittredge, who would have us believe that Groups D, E, and F of the Canterbury Tales constitute a “complete and highly finished” “act” in Chaucer's “Human Comedy;” that the Wife's Prologue is a fling at the Clerk; that this gentleman finds it “gall and wormwood” and in his Tale and Envoy makes a deliberate and a studied reply; that during the Merchant's Tale the Wife is “still in the foreground,” and even “holds the centre of the stage”; and that the Franklin, by a process that is “manifestly deliberate,” carries the debate to “a triumphant conclusion by solving the problem.”
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1917
References
1 Chaucer's Discussion of Marriage, in Modern Philology, ix, pp. 436-467 (April, 1912); Chaucer and his Poetry (Harvard University Press, 1915), pp. 185-210.
2 which ye have on honde. Surely this refers only to the fact that January, contrary to the advice of Justinus, has chosen to marry.
3 Certain manuscripts give the Endlink of the Merchant and the Headlink of the Squire as a continuous whole, and even designate it as the “Squire's Prolog.” There is no time-note in Group F except when the Squire remarks:
I wol mat taryen yow, for it is pryme,
and even from this I am unable to draw any inference. Certain other manuscripts place the Squire's Tale before Group D.
4 F, 692-694.
5 Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry, p. 186. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, vol. ii, p. 526: “No one is imposed upon by her contemptuous concession that marriage is inferior to virginity, or by her perfect willingness to admit the superiority of a state which she has not the slightest desire to share.”
6 In the lyric poetry of the Continent, and especially in that of Portugal, a pilgrimage is frequently represented as a pretext for meeting one's lover. See Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France au Moyen Age, ed. 1889, pp. 163 ff. The same custom doubtless existed in England. But it is a trifle pedantic to appeal to literary parallels. Occasions supposedly religious are in actual life still made a pretext for love-making.
7 E, 83-84
8 E, 155-158.
9 E, 932-938.
10 E, 206-207.
11 E, 871-872; E, 902-903; see also E, 654-655.
12 I owe this penetrating suggestion to Professor E. T. McLaughlin of Yale University.
He is now deed and nayled in his cheste,
I prey to God so yeve his soule reste!
13 See Renier, Novelle Inedite di Giovanni Sercambi, p. 401.
14 An excellent scholar, whom I am not authorized to name, calls my attention to the fact that in seven of Dr. Furnivall's reprints the rubric is Lenvoye de Chaucer. Ms. Dd. 4.24 omits the rubric but gives the word Auctor in the margin. It is Chaucer and not the Clerk of Oxford whose voice we recognize in the Envoy.
15 Namely in vv. F, 426, 452, 479, 483, 505, 517, 546, 620, and 622.
16 F, 761-786.
17 William Archer, Play-Making, a Manual of Craftsmanship, pp. 201-234; Brander Matthews, A Study of the Drama.
I will add that Chaucer recognizes the principle, and makes exquisite use of it in the Knight's Tale, by adding to Boccaccio's story an appeal twice made by Venus to her “father” Saturn, who twice assures her that ultimately she shall have her way. We are thus prepared for divine intervention, and the sudden miracle by which Arcite is mortally wounded in the very hour of victory makes no discord in our imaginations.
A friend who has read my proofs contributes the following suggestion: “Apropos of surprize you might refer to Kittredge (Shakspere, Cambr., 1916, p. 19): ‘In his exposition Shakspere always follows the established Elizabethan method, which was, to make every significant point as clear as daylight, and to omit nothing that the writer regarded as of importance. However much the dramatis personae mystify each other, the audience is never to be perplexed: it is invariably in the secret.‘ ”