Table Of Content

Historians on Chaucer Historians on Chaucer The ‘General Prologue’ to the Canterbury Tales EDITED BY Stephen H. Rigby, with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries #OxfordUniversityPress2014 Themoralrightsoftheauthorshavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2014 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer PublishedintheUnitedStatesofAmericabyOxfordUniversityPress 198MadisonAvenue,NewYork,NY10016,UnitedStatesofAmerica BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2014933814 ISBN 978–0–19–968954–5 Printedandboundby CPIGroup(UK)Ltd,Croydon,CR04YY LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. PREFACE To read Chaucer today is, in some measure, to read him historically. When the poet tells us that the Sergeant of Law has often been at the ‘Parvys’ (I:310),referstotheFranklin’ssanguine‘complexioun’(I:333),ornotesthat the Knight’s crusading experiences include service with the Teutonic Order in ‘Lettow’ (i.e. Lithuania) (I: 54), comprehension of the literal sense of the text requires some knowledge of fourteenth-century institutions, ideas, and events. Moregenerally, discussionsofwhethertheKnight’s crusadingactiv- ities are being held up for approval or disapproval in the ‘General Prologue’ are likely to cite the various, and sometimes conflicting, ways in which the morality of crusading, and in particular of campaigns mounted by the Teutonic Order against the Lithuanians, were regarded in Chaucer’s own day. Certainly, modern literary critics, influenced by a range of Marxist, feminist, post-structuralist, new historicist, post-colonialist and cultural materialist approaches, have been eager to adopt historical and sociological approachestoliteraryworksfromthepastandhaveinsistedontheneedto read medieval literature in its historical context.1 Whereas the works of canonical authors such as Chaucer were once admired because they were seen to speak to ‘us’ across the centuries about some timeless ‘human condition’, their works are now likely to be seen as interventions in the social,political,andideologicalconflictsoftheirday.2Medievalliterarytexts have thus come to be understood as instances of ‘social language practice’, being to some extent determined by contemporary social structures, 1 Foracollectionofkeytheoreticalreadings,seeJulieRivkinandMichaelRyan,eds,Literary Theory:anAnthology(Oxford:Blackwell,1988).FortheseapproachesinChaucerstudies,seeSteve Ellis,ed.,Chaucer:AnOxfordGuide(Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,2005),pp.353–463. 2 On humanist criticism, see Stephen H. Rigby, Chaucer in Context: Society, Allegory and Gender (Manchester:ManchesterUniversityPress,1996),pp.95–9. vi / Preface institutions, conventions, and behaviour but also, in turn, participating in them and even influencing them.3 This historical approach to literature has been particularly evident in the fieldofChaucerstudies.AsaresultoftheinfluenceofscholarssuchasDavid Aers, Stephen Knight, Paul Strohm, Lee Patterson, Peggy Knapp, and David Wallace, Chaucer’s work has come to be read ‘socio-historically’, as an engagement with the social and political problems and ideological conflicts ofthelatefourteenthcentury.4Thus,whilstpsychoanalyticalinterpretations ofliterarytextshaveoftenbeencriticizedforbeingahistorical,evenpsycho- analytical readingsofChaucerhave,in practice, oftenbeenmarked bytheir sensitivity‘tothedynamicsofpowerandauthority;toissuesofpatronage;to thepoliticsofrace,gender,sexualityorclass;tothepoignancyandpleasures of the subject in/of desire amid the complexities of particular times’.5 For those who proceed in this way, the context needed for understanding the CanterburyTales—onwhichChaucerwasprobablyworkinginthedozenorso yearspriortohisdeathin1400—isnotonlyotherliterarytextsofthisperiod, such as Langland’s Piers Plowman or Gower’s Confessio Amantis, but also docu- mentary sources of the day, such as Richard II’s 1387 proclamation against slander or the 1382 letters in which aldermen of the city of London were accused of treason at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt.6 Yet, despite this well-established ‘historical turn’ in literary studies, professional historians themselves have generally been loath to turn their hands to interpretation of works of imaginative literature from the Middle Ages, and have largely abstained from the debates about the social meaning of the Canterbury Tales which have so engaged literary critics.7 Accordingly, 3 HelenBarr,SocioliteraryPracticeinLateMedievalEngland(Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,2001), pp.1–2. 4 Forabibliography,seeRigby,ChaucerinContext,Chapter2.SeealsoDavidWallace,Chaucerian Polity:AbsoluteLineagesandAssociationalForminEnglandandItaly(Stanford:StanfordUniversityPress, 1997). 5 PatriciaC.Ingham,‘PsychoanlyticCriticism’,inEllis,Chaucer:AnOxfordGuide,pp.463–78,at 468. See also Louise O. Aranye Fradenburg, Sacrifice Your Love: Psychoanalysis, Historicism, Chaucer (Minneapolis:UniversityofMinnesotaPress,2002),pp.64–71,76–7. 6 MarionTurner,ChaucerianConflict:LanguagesofAntagonisminLateFourteenth-CenturyLondon(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), pp. 3–7. On the dating of the Canterbury Tales, see Helen Cooper, The CanterburyTales(Oxford:ClarendonPress,1989),p.5. 7 ForanexceptionseePeterBrownandAndrewButcher,TheAgeofSaturn:LiteratureandHistory intheCanterburyTales(Oxford:BasilBlackwell,1991). Preface / vii this collection of essays seeks to enable a group of distinguished historians to enter the fray, to bring their specialist expertise to bear on the group of fictional pilgrims who are introduced at the beginning of the Tales. Hope- fully, the volume will both demonstrate what historians themselves can contribute to the historical understanding of Chaucer’s work and will encourage other historians to engage with the debates about locating his poetry in its historical context which literary scholars have initiated. The ‘General Prologue’ is a particularly appropriate text for such an enterprise because of the exceptionally wide range of social groups whose represen- tatives it portrays, although, as we shall see, Chaucer created these por- traits by adopting—and adapting in his own ways—specific contemporary literary conventions and ideological stereotypes. Inevitably, the limitations of space mean that the readings of the pilgrims offered below are necessarily partial. After all, many of the pilgrims could be (and indeed have been) the subject of entire books in their own right. In particular, whilst the chapters below pay some attention to the presentation of the pilgrims in their appearances in the ‘links’ between the tales, they generally refrain from extensive discussion of the tales themselves or of the relationship between teller and tale.8 Finally,toavoidanypossiblemisunderstanding,itshouldbestressedthat thecontributorstothisvolumecertainlydonotseean‘historical’approach in general, or any ‘historical’ approach in particular, as providing a unique master-key which will open up the meaning of, or account for the all the pleasures provided by, Chaucer’s text and nor do they claim that their readings will replace or correct all previous interpretations of his work. On the contrary, there are innumerable keys which help unlock the sense of Chaucer’stext—althoughthisdoesnotmeanthatallofthekeysonofferto us necessarily succeed in so doing.9 Rather, this volume has a much more modest aim, that of offering new information, perspectives, and analyses 8 TheexceptionsherearetheSecondNunandtheNun’sPriest,whoarenotdescribedin detailinthe‘GeneralPrologue’itself. 9 ArthurLindley,‘“VanysshedWasThisDaunce,HeNysteWhere”:Alison’sAbsenceinthe WifeofBath’sPrologueandTale’,inSteveEllis,ed.,Chaucer:TheCanterburyTales(London:Longman, 1998),pp.100–20,at100–2. viii / Preface which, we hope, will contribute to the continuing reinterpretation of an author about whose work there is ‘probably less of a critical consensus... than for any other English writer’ and whose complex poetry continues to fascinate and to perplex modern audiences.10 Stephen Rigby and Alastair Minnis 10 HelenCooper,TheStructureoftheCanterburyTales(Athens:UniversityofGeorgiaPress,1982), p.2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TheeditorsaregratefultotheHuntingtonLibraryforpermissiontoreproduce from the Ellesmere manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, the illustrations of the DoctorofPhysic(Figure1,Chapter17,TheDoctorofPhysic)andofChaucer the pilgrim used in the cover design of this book. Special thanks are owed to Caroline Barron for her help in organizing the workshop for contributors to this volume which was held in London in 2012 and to Nigel Ramsay for his assistance with the proof-reading of this volume.