CHAPTER TWO
The Nun and the Courtly Lady: Convention and Subversion in Chaucer’s
Prioress
Abit ne makith neithir monk ne frere, But clene lyf and devocioun
Makith gode men of religioun.
(The Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 6192-194)
The form in which a literary text is transmitted has an “expressive function” (McKenzie 1999: 22). Therefore, such paratextual elements as miniatures and woodcuts function both as a threshold to and as a comment on the text.1 This chapter will focus on the relationship between Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale, the form in which the tale was transmitted in fifteenth-century illustrated editions of the Canterbury Tales, and its reception as reflected by the editorial choices of commissioners, supervisors and printers. Among the fifteenth-century pictorial interpretive “actualizations” of the Prioress’s Tale and of her portrayal in the General Prologue, two stand out as particularly relevant for the complex interaction between author, text and reader: the miniature representing the Prioress in Huntington Library, MS El C 26 9 (Fig. 2.1) and the woodcut depicting the pilgrims at table (Fig. 2.3) in Caxton’s 1483 edition of the Canterbury Tales. They reveal two contrasting interpretive approaches which identify and separate what in Chaucer’s text had been two overlapping sides of the Prioress’s identity: the nun and the courtly lady.
While most nineteenth-century critics offer an essentially positive assessment of the Prioress’s portrayal in the General Prologue, the first decades of twentieth-century criticism are influenced to a great extent by Lowes’ suggestion that the portrayal, although sympathetic, is informed by a “delicate irony” and it depicts “the imperfect submergence of the woman in the nun” (1910: 440, 442).2 In fact, many scholars stress Chaucer’s supposedly satirical intent in describing the Prioress, the ambivalence of her character as well as her oscillation between worldly and spiritual values, while admitting that the satire is of the most sympathetic sort.3
1
The term “comment” is intended here as “a moment in the semiotic productivity of the text” (Segre 1993: 236).
2 For a survey of twentieth-century criticism see C. Collette, “Critical Approaches to the Prioress’s Tale and the Second
Nun’s Tale”, in Chaucer’s Religious Tales, ed. by D. C. Benson, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990, pp. 95-107.
3 See F. N. Robinson, The Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1933, p. 754; G. G. Coulton,
Medieval Panorama, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1938, p. 153; K. Malone, Chapters on Chaucer, Baltimore: The John
Hopkins Press, 1951, p. 181; J. Speirs, Chaucer the Maker, London: Faber and Faber, 1957, pp. 178-180; P. G. Ruggiers, The Art of the Canterbury Tales, Madison: Wisconsin UP, 1965, pp. 175-176; J. Mann, Chaucer and
Medieval Estates Satire, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1973, pp. 129-137; A. David, “An ABC to the Style of the
Prioress”, in Acts of Interpretation: The Text in Its Contexts, 700-1600: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature
At the two poles of this line of interpretation stand the “sympathetic and sentimental” critical approaches, and the “hard” responses,4 which condemn the tale’s anti-Judaism.5 Among the most fervent defenders of the Prioress’s portrayal and tale, Kittredge and Russell argue, respectively, for the Prioress’s “poignant trait of thwarted motherhood” which invests her character (1967: 178), and the tale’s pure Marian devotion with its emphasis on humility, innocence and transcendence (1969: 216, 218). More recently, Nolan has argued that the tales of the Man of Law, the Clerk, the Second Nun and the Prioress point to “the purest, most direct means by which Christians may overcome the inevitable trials of their mortal pilgrimage” (1990: 37). The critic’s exclusive attention to the aesthetic and formal aspects of the prologue and tale triggers an objection which has been beautifully phrased by Camille when commenting on the distorted representation of the Jews and the aesthetic quality of the Bible moralisée:
When we discuss the majestic colours and superbly detailed designs of the Bible moralisée, how conscious are we that its luminous pages reek with poisonous untruths? How can we explicate its ideological aims and its purposeful misrepresentation if we are misrepresenting it to ourselves in the twentieth century as an important work of art, with all the overtones of disinterested contemplation that such “aesthetic” status carries? (1992: 190)
His question reveals the limits of critical approaches which, by concentrating exclusively on the aesthetic function, tend to ignore the power of images, and of the visual arts in general, to shape ideology as well as their condition as products of a specific cultural and historical milieu. Camille’s objection can also be applied to the written word with its tradition of scriptural and patristic authority, and to literature with its canonical, universally acclaimed authors. In similar terms but with a more severe overtone, Schoeck wonders if the reader can willingly ignore the “unmistakable reality of the anti-Jewish theme and concern himself only with the literary form in which that theme finds expression” (1960: 246).
Although touched upon in previous criticism, the issue of the Prioress’s Tale’s anti-Jewish aspects became central only in the aftermath of World War II, in a Holocaust aware society. The “hard” line of interpretation is characterised by a marked tendency to exculpate Chaucer-the-author from the streak of anti-Judaism which runs through the whole tale and to attribute it to the flawed character of the Prioress. What becomes evident is scholars’ uneasiness in approaching such a complex character as the Prioress whom Harry Bailly addresses with the outmost reverence in the Verba hospitis (VII, 445-52), which links the Shipman’s Tale to the Prioress’s Tale. The Host’s
4 Boyd distinguishes between three types of modern responses to the Prioress’s Tale: the “sympathetic or
fundamentally romantic and sentimental” ones, the “mixed responses” with their insistence on the ambiguity of the Prioress’s character, and the “hard” readings (1987: 32).
5 Because of its more exclusively religious connotations, the term ‘anti-Judaism’ offers a clearer picture of medieval
people’s attitude towards Jews and it does not have the racial, political and ethnic implications of the modern term ‘anti-Semitism’.
attitude is significant if considered in the light of his rude interruption of the Monk’s Tale and it resists inclusion in the pattern of satirical interpretation so dear to the line of “hard” criticism. Yet the interpretation of the Prioress’s portrayal in the General Prologue in ironic and/or satirical terms serves the specific purpose of presenting Chaucer as a spokesman against anti-Judaism. Steadman argues that she is a worldly nun who lacks caritas and misericordia and breaks the rules of the Benedictine convent by keeping pets and going on pilgrimages (1956: 1-6). Donaldson refers to her “un-Christian” attitude towards the Jews and her “failure of character”(1975: 933-94). Yet as Frank has pointed out, Chaucer’s condemnation of the teller would imply the condemnation of the extremely popular medieval genre of the miracle stories (1982: 187).
Miracle stories were often gathered in collections of religious tales for clerics and preachers such as those of Gautier de Coincy and Caesarius Heisterbach. The miracle of the boy singer on which Chaucer draws in his Prioress’s Tale has been preserved in no less than thirty-eight versions both in Latin and in vernacular coming from France, Spain, Sweden and England.6 What the great number of stories having as protagonists murderous, sacrilegious and idolatrous Jews shows is that Jews were as present as ever in the visual arts, drama, miracles and the liturgy although they had been expelled from England in 1290. They represent what Trachtenberg has called the “theological Jew”, the construct of the Jew validated by medieval culture and church doctrine, as opposed to the “real Jew” (1943: 163) of whom Chaucer and his contemporaries probably had little or no direct knowledge. This construct presents the Jew as the less-than-human “Other” whose verbal and pictorial image gradually overlaps that of Satan. As such, he becomes the archenemy in the continuous battle between good and evil, and it opens a wide range of possibilities for dramatic treatment. Therefore, the line of criticism which emphasises the poet’s condemnation of anti-Judaism risks attributing to him attitudes and beliefs far ahead of his time.7
The contrasting responses of twentieth-century critics testify to the complexity of Chaucer’s description of the Prioress. While some of the problematic issues scholars discuss are more consonant with contemporary preoccupations and interests, others must have been shared by fifteenth-century readers8. The Prioress’s miniature in the Ellesmere (Fig. 2.1) and the woodcut representing the group of pilgrims in Caxton’s 1483 edition of the Canterbury Tales (Fig. 2.3) suggest that the “indeterminacies” of the Prioress’s portrayal in the General Prologue constituted then as now a source of uneasiness for those who approached Chaucer’s text. The language of the
6 See R. M. Correale and M. Hamel (eds), Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, Vol. 2, Cambridge: D. S.
Brewer, 2005, pp. 583-598.
7 For an insightful discussion on the issue of anti-Judaism in the Prioress’s Tale, see E. Giaccherini “Reappraising The
Prioress’s Tale: Anti-Judaism, Sentimentality, and High Pathos”, in One of Us: Studi inglesi e conradiani offerti a
Mario Curreli, ed. by F. Ciompi, Pisa: ETS, 2009, pp. 155-66.
8
By readers I mean here compilers, scribes, stationers, editors who represent the medieval specialised readership, just as literary critics represent nowadays the specialised readership par excellence.
portrayal must have been such a source of uneasiness. Chaucer borrows many terms from the language of courtly love poetry and he draws on the conventional representation of ideal feminine beauty. Her name, Madame Eglentyne, meaning sweet briar, recalls that of romance heroines:
And sikerly she was of greet desport,
And ful plesaunt, and amyable of port. (I, 137-38) Hir nose tretys, hir eyen greye as glas,
Hir mouth ful small, and therto softe and reed. But sikerly she hadde a fair forheed;
It was almoost a spanne brood, I trowe;
For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe. (I, 152-56)
Her smile is “simple and coy” (I, 119), she strives to counterfeit “cheere of court” and to be “estatlich of manere” (I, 139-40), so that the other pilgrims should regard her as “digne of reverence” (I, 141). She is particularly intent upon exhibiting good table manners which seem to be modelled on la Vieille’s lesson imparted to Bel Accueil on how to attract suitors. Yet these could have been the proper manners of a well-bred lady prescribed in courtesy books:
At mete wel ytaught was she with alle; She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle, Ne wette hir fyngres in hir sauce depe; Wel koude she carie a morsel and wel kepe That no drope ne fille upon hire brest. Of curteisie was set ful muchel hir lest. Hir over-lippe wyped she so clene
That in hir coppe ther was no ferthyng sene
Of grece, whan she dronken hadde hir draughte. (I, 127-35)
The Prioress’s French of “Stratford atte Bowe” (I, 125) is of a provincial type and, as opposed to the “Frenssh of Parys” (I, 126) spoken at the royal court, it has negative overtones in that it suggests that the she is only a poor imitator of the genuine courtly language.9 While most critics have regarded the courtly elements of the Prioress’s portrayal as characteristic of the worldly nun, Frank has convincingly argued that her smile, name, manner and features are also Marian, since from the twelfth century on, the cult of the Virgin Mary and the amour courtois intertwined harmoniously in religious and secular poetry (1979: 346-47). In the Middle Ages, this interplay and dialogue between the sacred and the profane characterised not only secular and Marian poetry but also the visual arts.10 Frank also points out that the eglantine, like many other flowers, was a common symbol for the Virgin and it was believed to represent her Five Joys. Examples of the use of eglantine with a religious, profoundly devout connotation are to be found in the chansons and
9
It is worth noting that language, in its distorted and misused forms, is fundamental in characterising clerics like the Friar and the Pardoner: the former lisps when he speaks English out of sheer affectation; the latter would speak nothing but Latin after “he wel dronken hadde the wyn” (I, 637).
10 For an interesting discussion of the relationship between the visual representation of Venus and that of the Virgin in
the thirteenth century see M. Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-making in Medieval Art, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992, pp. 220-241.
miracles of Gautier de Coincy’s Les miracles de Notre Dame.11 The same applies to the adjectives “simple and coy” (I, 119) which, far from being confined to the poetry of courtly love, are also employed in Marian poetry (Frank 1979: 347-49).
In addition to Chaucer’s use of courtly language, the ambiguity of the Prioress’s portrayal is increased by the poet’s application of the Christian concepts of caritas and misericordia to Madame Eglentyne’s behaviour towards dogs and mice. Ambiguity culminates in the Latin motto inscribed on her brooch, Amor Vincit Omnia, which appears for the first time in a secular poem,Virgil’s Eclogue 10.69, and is later employed with a Christian connotation. Her weeping provoked by scenes of cruelty towards animals is not inconsistent with a religious woman’s vocation, since a similar case is offered by Margery Kemp, who mentions instances in which she cried copiously when she saw animals and children being beaten.12 The term “roosted flesh”(I, 147) used to describe the hounds’ diet is also employed by the Parson in his admonition to those who, not being content with “roosted flesh and sode flesh”, will have the “raw flesh of folks wyves and hir doghters” (X, 900), thus adding the sin of lust to that of gluttony. As Steadman has pointed out, the hounds’ food might be an indirect reference to the dietary excesses of the Prioress’s Benedictine convent and it is paradoxically rich for a society in which the poor often lived in the utmost misery (1956: 2).
The discrepancies between Eglentyne’s status and her worldly inclinations have also been discussed in terms of the appropriateness/inappropriateness of her attire. Mann quotes the warning addressed to religious women against the dangers of fine clothing in Ancrene Wisse, and argues that the Prioress’s “fine cloak”, “elaborate rosary” and golden brooch are “ill-fitted” to her profession of humility (1973: 129-30). Conversely, Hodges builds a strong case for the propriety of Eglentyne’s array based on historical, literary and iconographic evidence. She shows that the red coral rosary with its green gauds is entirely appropriate in both material and style, and it is modest in comparison with the ones described in the historical documents containing references to the gifts bequeathed to medieval prioresses and nuns. Moreover, if the motto inscribed on the brooch is considered in the light of the interplay between the languages of courtly and of religious poetry, it appears as entirely acceptable, a fact which is confirmed by its presence on devotional statues (Hodges 2005: 94, 106). Hodges argues, however, that by creating a contrast between her un-Christian actions and her orthodox religious attire, the poet draws attention to the Prioress’s forfeiting of her condition of bride of Christ, whose outward cleanness and propriety, expressed
11 Cf. K. Malone, who argues that the Prioress’s name has no religious associations and that it goes back to the
chansons de geste (1951: 181).
12
Weeping represents an important part of Margery’s devotional life although, in her case, tears are usually triggered by the meditation on Christ’s Passion.
through her attire, is supposed to reflect her spiritual purity. She also points out that the same visual signs of devotional intent – kneeling posture, nun’s habit, pilgrim’s staff, rosary, Psalter – are used by manuscript illuminators to depict the contrasting figures of Vices and Virtues (Hodges 2005: 53-63,109-10).
Just as with words, the meanings and functions of visual motifs change with the context in which they appear. For example, in several fourteenth and fifteenth-century manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose, Papelardie (Fig. 2.5) and Forced Abstinence are depicted as nuns or nun-pilgrims whose cloak, veil, wimple, rosary, pilgrim’s staff and kneeling posture are proper outward signs of piety which contrast with the allegorical characters’ inward sinfulness.13 The same signs of piety are employed in the Livres des quatre vertus (Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 570, fol. 16r) to represent Continence who wears a nun’s habit and holds a Psalter in her hands. When depicting Papelardie, the limners and/or the commissioners of the Roman de la Rose manuscripts are faithful to Guillaume de Lorris’s description of Hypocrisy. The author presents Papelardie as one of the figures painted on the wall of the garden, thus creating an interesting interplay between word and image. In the Roman de la Rose, the idea of the contrast between pious outward appearance and inner sinfulness is further developed in the discourse of Faux-Semblant who explains that he is Hypocrisy’s son. His leman is Constrained Abstinence. She dresses in “many a queynte array” (l. 6342) when she wants to deceive people.14
One of their favourite pastimes consists in putting on the habit of the different members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. What distinguishes the truly religious person from the false are neither words nor habit, but his/her good deeds. If the words are not “cosyn to the deed” (I, 742), argues Faux-Semblant,
They thenke on gile, withoute dreede, What manner clothing that they were Or what estat that evere they bere, Lered or lewde, lord or lady,
Knyght, squyer, burgeis, or bayly. (ll. 6213-18)
Despite the fact that details about her physical appearance and table manners abound, Chaucer’s portrayal of the Prioress contains no reference to Madame Eglentyne’s deeds. Her charity and pity are mentioned in relation to dogs and mice but not in relation to her neighbours and to the
13 Bodleian Library, MS Add. A. 22 (1300), fols 12v and 110v; MS e Mus. 65 (1390), fol. 8v; MS Selden Supra 57
(1348), fol. 4r; MS Douce 332, fols 4v and 115r; MS Douce 371 (1400), fols 4r, 68v, 79v and 80v; MS Douce 195 (15th century, end), fol. 86v.
14
The translation is from G. Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose, in Benson (1988: 691). All further quotations in English are from this edition.
poor.15 Only by adding details concerning the Prioress’s good deeds would Chaucer have shifted the balance towards the interpretation of her description in terms of true religiousness within the context of a trend in the literary, religious and iconographic traditions of the Middle Ages which argued that “the habit didn’t make the monk”. The poet must have been well aware of this trend, since he translated the Roman, witnessed the spread of Lollardy with its emphasis on the inner dimension of the spiritual life as opposed to outward ostentation, and probably saw miniatures representing Papelardie and Faux-Semblant in the manuscript from which he translated. Yet he preferred to leave space for contradictory interpretations by creating a character which seems to hover between the orthodox and the unorthodox, the worldly and the spiritual. Unless read in the light of modern sensitivity about the so-called anti-Judaism of her tale, Chaucer’s portrayal of Madame Eglentyne precludes univocal readings.16
Only one miniature representing the Prioress survives in fifteenth-century manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. It appears in a niche on folio 148v of the Ellesmere manuscript (Fig. 2.1) and it reflects an orthodox reading of her portrayal and tale. The Ellesmere manuscript is an “edited” codex (Parkes and Doyle 1991: 229) whose rich decoration and careful textual division indicate that the commissioner was a wealthy person, probably a member of the nobility. The choice of representing the individual pilgrims instead of narrative scenes and of placing them at the beginning of the tales indicates the insistence on the telling function and stresses the importance of the frame structure (Hannah III 1989: 14). Three different artists worked on the pictorial programme of the Ellesmere. The miniature of the Prioress was made by the artist whom Rickert has identified as “Hand 3”.17
The Prioress is depicted in the habit of a Benedictine nun. She is wearing a black cloak over a white tunic and headdress and she rides sidesaddle on her horse whose trappings of black leather are ornamented with white rosettes. Piper interprets the Prioress’s facial features as expressing “suffering and pity, the emotional accompaniment to her story of the child martyr” (1924: 249). The presence of details from Chaucer’s description of Madame Eglentyne such as the broad forehead, the small mouth and the rosary of coral beads indicate that the illuminator and/or commissioner had read the text carefully. Yet in depicting her as a young woman, they apply their own interpretation
15
In the Canterbury Tales, the “parfit charitee” (I, 531) of the Ploughman reflected in his love for God, his altruistic behaviour towards his neighbours and his generosity towards the poor is the ideal against which good deeds are to be measured.
16 The same cannot be argued for the characters of the Prioress’s tale who are stereotypical and represent embodiments
of the concepts of good (the boy martyr) and evil (the Jews) filtered through a Christian perspective.
17 “Hand 3” also worked on the miniatures of the Knight, the Miller, the Reeve, the Cook, the Man of Law, the Wife of
Bath, the Friar, the Summoner, the Clerk, the Merchant, the Squire, the Franklin, the Physician, the Pardoner, the Shipman and the Parson. All the pilgrims are shown on horseback. What distinguishes these miniatures from those made by the other two artists is that they are drawn on a smaller scale and there is no grassy turf under the horses’ feet. See M. Rickert (1940: 561-605). Emmerson identifies the limner as “artist 1 (1995: 143-170).
to Chaucer’s text, since the poet never mentions the Prioress’s age. The choice is significant in that it evokes the image of the Virgin, who is customarily represented as a young and beautiful maid in the visual arts.18 An aged woman’s image would have lost its power to evoke the Virgin. The miniature is set in a context which resists any interpretation in terms of the contrast between appearance and essence expressed in the miniatures representing Papelardie, Faux-Semblant and Abstinence Contrainte in the codices of the Roman de la Rose. It appears in a niche of the foliate bar border immediately after the Prioress’s Prologue which opens with a paraphrase of Psalm 8:1-2 and continues with the praise of the Virgin in a re-elaboration of the Second Nun’s Invocacio ad Mariam (VIII, 50-56). According to Patterson, the apostrophic style of the Prioress’s Prologue is characteristic of Marian poetry generally and the echoes of the Little Office of the Virgin as well as of the Mass of the Holy Innocents are part of the Prioress’s attempt to “accommodate her language to the hieratic norms of a liturgical discourse that is purged of historical impurities” (2001: 131). Although the critic oversimplifies the Prioress’s character by reducing her to an uncomprehending instrument through which a cultural form is reproduced, a case of “innocent ventriloquism”, he draws attention to miracle stories’ claim to transpersonal validity.
The “theological Jew” of the Prioress’s Tale as well as of miracle stories and Marian legends in general was a construct which found little or no basis in real-life Jews. On the one hand, he embodied medieval people’s fears concerning Jews and Muslims, especially in the aftermath of the crusades. On the other hand, in stories about Host and Christian image desecration, he is a projection of Christians’ own doubts about transubstantiation, a doctrine declared dogma only in the second half of the thirteenth century. The Prioress narrative of the boy murdered by the Jews because he sings Alma Redemptoris Mater on his way home has an edifying purpose and it serves as propaganda for Christian faith and Marian devotion. This is why such idiosyncrasies as the reference to the murdered boy’s disconsolate mother as to a “newe Rachel” (VII, 627) would not have provoked as much as a raised eyebrow in the medieval listener and reader.19 The same applies to the act of temporal suspension through which the Prioress evokes another Christian martyr’s death as having occurred “but a litel while ago” (VII, 686) although he had died in 1255. The child martyr is “younge Hugh of Lyncoln” (VII, 683) whose historical existence is attested in medieval documents and whose death was falsely attributed to the Jews. What ultimately matters in miracle stories and Marian legends is neither historical accuracy nor truth, but the power of the Virgin to do
18 The same artist had depicted the Wife of Bath as young woman, although Alisoun herself had stated that age had
taken away her beauty and vigour. The Wife of Bath’s self-description as an aged woman would have ill matched the image of the beautiful dangerous temptress which the artist wanted to evoke, so he gave her an attractively youthful appearance. A similar mechanism is at work in the Prioress’s portrait.
19 The episode of the Jewish mother Rachel weeping for her children (Jeremiah 31:15) was interpreted in Matthew 2:18
as a prefiguration of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents in which Jewish children were murdered by Herod. Conversely, in the Prioress’s Tale a Christian child is murdered by the Jews.
miracles for true believers. The “Other”, the antagonist, the Jew is essential in these stories because it helps to “interrogate Christian misconduct and permits the staging of religious misbehaviour” (Bale 2006: 58). Geographical dislocation is also fundamental since “at the miracle’s kernel is a potent and vivid fantasy of a harmonious Christian community founded on the Jew’s ejection” (Bale 2006: 66). In fact, each of the numerous versions of the miracle of the boy singer offer settings which are geographically distant from the country or place of origin of the single versions.
While the analogues of the Prioress’s Tale in groups A and B end with the recovery of the child’s body and the conversion of the Jews, the versions of group C, which includes its closest analogue (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 32, fol. 92r), contain an elaborate funeral scene (Brown 1958: 447-51). In this scene, the Christian community gathered around the bier witnesses one more miracle: when holy water is sprinkled over the boys body he starts singing once again and explains to the abbot how, at the moment of his death, the Virgin had asked him to sing after placing a “greyn” on his tongue. Unique to Chaucer’s version, the grain has been explained in a great variety of ways,20 none of which contemplates the hypothesis that what Chaucer may have had in mind was a sort of obol, the coin placed on the tongues of the dead in ancient Greece. The obol served to pay Charon who carried the souls of the newly deceased across the Styx. This offering was fundamental in order to prevent the soul from wandering among the shadows of Hades. An ear of wheat was sometimes engraved on these coins. This is significant, since one of the MED entries for “grain” is: (a) A species of cereal plant or crop; also, peas; (b) corn and/or cereal grains; wheat. The pagan context of the obol would not have constituted an impediment to its adoption in a Christian tale.
The funeral scene shifts the focus from the punishment of the Jews to the miracle of the boy’s singing. In the group C versions of the story and in Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale the “clergeon” (VII, 503) sings the antiphon Alma Redemptoris Mater instead of the more provoking Gaude Maria virgo. The latter was particularly suited to irritate a Jewish audience through its overt verbal attack: “Erubescat Iudaeus infelix, qui dicit Christum Joseph semine esse natum”.21 In fact, in some versions containing the responsorium, the responsibility of the boy in provoking the Jew’s violence is acknowledged and they are not punished.22 In the Prioress’s Tale, the emphasis is placed on Marian praise rather than on the victory over Judaism. Moreover, although it is true that the
20 In the analogues which contain the funeral scene the object placed on the boy’s tongue is sometimes a gem,
sometimes a white pebble. In the Vernon manuscript version (Bodleian Library, MS 3938) it is a lily. See explanatory notes to The Canterbury Tales, in Benson (1988: 916).
21 The quotation from the responsorium is from C. Brown, “The Prioress’s Tale”, in Sources and Analogues of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ed. by G. Dempster and W. F. Bryan, Atlantic Highlands (NJ): Humanities Press, 1958, p.
448.
murderers are cruelly tortured and killed, it is also true that only the Jews responsible for the clergeon’s death are punished, an important detail which seems to have escaped critics’ notice:
With torment and with shameful deeth echon, This provost dooth thise Jewes for to sterve
That of this mordre wiste, and that anon. (VII, 628-30)
The punishment, with its enactment of the Old Testament lex talionis (Exodus 21:23-25), is one more paradox within a Christian context which is supposed to promote forgiveness and the love for one’s neighbour. Yet the medieval audience would probably not have perceived it as such, since miracle stories, Marian legends, mystery plays, liturgical exempla and the visual arts endorsed the image of the Jew as less than a human being. He was often represented with a devil’s tail and horns, goat’s beard and he was accompanied by a he-goat, symbolic of satanic lechery. As Trachtenberg has pointed out, in some pseudoscientific works of the period, a distinctive unpleasant odour was ascribed to Jews, foetor judaicus, probably because of their association with the billy goat and of the then common Christian belief that good spirits emitted a pleasant fragrance while evil spirits were accompanied by an offensive stench (1943: 46-49). This may be one of the reasons why the privy, the “cloaca”, is chosen to hide the child’s body in the group C versions of the tale of the boy singer. In the legend of the Jewish mother whose daughter’s body emits a pleasant fragrance as an effect of Christian baptism, an attempt is made to undo this effect by immersing the girl in the waters of the sewer. In the Prioress’s Tale, the choice of the privy as a hiding place for the clergeon’s body may have thus been influenced by the legends concerning the pleasant fragrance of good spirits as opposed to the stench of the Devil. The boy has all the attributes of saintliness, although the fragrance of his body is not explicitly mentioned in the text, while the Jews, “the cursed folk” (VII, 574) are explicitly associated with Satan. It is “the serpent Sathanas, / That hath in Jues herte his wasps nest” (VII, 558-59) who fuels the Jews’ anger by underlining that the boy sings “in youre despit” (VII, 564) and “agayn youre lawes reverence” (VII, 564).
The only other instance in which the Jews are called cursed and are identified with the Devil is the Parson’s sermon on the seven deadly sins. This is extremely significant in that it throws light, from within Chaucer’s own work, on the cultural and religious context underlying the Prioress’s Tale and its various versions. Most critics agree that Chaucer’s description of the Parson in the General Prologue is the ideal portrait of a “hooly”, “vertuous” (I 515), “discreet and benygne” (I, 518) Christian. If the descriptions of the other pilgrims (except for that of the Ploughman) seem to encourage contradictory readings and are sometimes outright satirical,23 the Parson appears as a
flawless shepherd of souls, the embodiment of the true Christian spirit. His sermon is an example of orthodox Christian doctrine. Yet, when exemplifying the form of the sin of wrath which consists in swearing, the Parson exclaims:
For Cristes sake, ne swereth nat so synfully in dismemberynge of Crist by soule, herte bones, and body. For certes, it semeth that ye thynke that the cursede Jewes ne dismembred nat ynough the preciouse persone of Crist, but ye dismembre hym moore […]. Thanne semeth it that men that sweren so horribly by his blessed name, that they despise it moore booldely than dide the cursede Jewes or elles the devel, that trembleth whan he heereth his name. (X, 591, 599)
These lines from the Parson’s sermon enclose two of the most widespread medieval stereotypes about Jews: their ritual dismembering of the body of Christ, which in the visual arts takes the form of Host desecration, and their kinship with the Devil. Moreover, the Parson distinguishes between “hastif Ire” which is venial and the premeditated “Ire”. The Jews’ conspiracy and their hiring of a homicide to murder the clergeon in the Prioress’s Tale places their anger within this second type of wrath, which is the product of a wicked heart and a deadly sin. Thus, although their anger may have been truly provoked by offensive elements in the boy’s song, in Chaucer’s version of the boy singer story they are irrevocably condemned. Since the Parson is obviously not satirized for his anti-Jewish views, there is no reason for Chaucer to do so in the case of the Prioress. While the accusations of worldliness brought against Madame Eglentyne by critics may find a justification in the ambiguity of her portrayal, the tendency to present Chaucer as a spokesman against anti-Judaism finds none.24 This is not to say that he held antisemitic opinions. There is not enough evidence in the poet’s oeuvre for either view. While none of the opinions voiced in the Canterbury Tales can be unquestionably attributed to Chaucer the auctor, they work together to reveal the poet’s Weltanschauung.
The Prioress tells a tale which is suited to her status. It is devotional and Marian in content and expresses a view of the Jews which was acceptable to most people in the Middle Ages. In fact, in the fifteenth century, it was often excerpted from the Canterbury Tales and inserted in compilations with a religious and devotional content. The tale was thus removed from the pilgrimage frame and there was no mention of Chaucer’s authorship.25 In these collections, the Prioress’s Tale “is placed back in the exemplary world from which it developed” (Bale 2006: 94). At the same time, the Marian miracle of the boy singer, which Chaucer had appropriated and
24
Recently, Bale has argued that “Chaucer brings a critical eye to bear on the boy’s song and its content” (2006: 86), thus following the line of criticism which sees in Chaucer a spokesman against anti-Judaism.
25 Two examples are British Library, Harley MS 1704 and Harley MS 2251. Bale makes an interesting analysis of these
and other fifteenth-century compilations containing the Prioress’s Tale (2006: 91-103). See also M. F. Godfrey, “The Fifteenth-century Prioress’s Tale and the Problem of Anti-Semitism”, in Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and
elaborated within the frame of courtly culture, is restored to the sphere of popular culture and devotion.
Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale is a significant example of how the story of the boy singer, was institutionalised in the Canterbury Tales, and presented to a different audience, of whom the frontispiece of Troilus and Criseyde (Corpus Christi College, MS 61, fol.1v) provides a precious visual representation. In this frontispiece, an author-figure, identified by some scholars as Chaucer, is depicted reciting his work to a royal audience. Despite the fact that it appeared in its original context and not in a collection of religious poetry, the illuminator and/or commissioner of the Ellesmere manuscript must have perceived the Prioress’s Tale as one more example of devotional poetry. The limner’s portrait of the Prioress is purged of all the equivocal elements which appear in Chaucer’s description. The most conspicuous absence in the Prioress’s portrait is that of her “smale houndes” (I, 146). While it is true that Chaucer does not mention whether Madame Eglentyne had brought her hounds with her on the pilgrimage or not, this is equally true of the Monks’ hounds. They are, however, depicted next to their master’s portrait at the beginning of the Monk’s Tale a highly significant fact, since the limner who created the Prioress’s portrait also worked on the Monk’s miniature. While the artist may have been unaware of the injunction against keeping pets in monasteries, he was definitely aware of the symbolic meaning of lapdogs in the visual arts.26 Therefore, he eliminated a motif which would have attached to the portrait of the Prioress the ideas of worldliness and lust. Two major factors may have determined his choice: the artist’s own response to the Prioress’s portrayal in the General Prologue and/or the commissioner’s instructions given with an eye to the aristocratic owner for whom the manuscript was being prepared. According to Hilmo, the illumination of the Ellesmere manuscript reflects a tendency to emphasise the aristocratic and privileged status of some of the pilgrims, while mocking the aspirations of other classes to a higher social status (2004: 189). The Prioress is obviously not a member of the aristocracy, but she is the pilgrim with the highest social status after the Knight and the Squire in whose company she appears in the woodcut representing the pilgrims at table in Caxton’s illustrated edition of the Canterbury Tales.
In the proem to his 1483 edition Caxton explains that he had decided to reprint the tales because one of his gentlemen customers had complained about the discrepancies between the
26 Small dogs seated in the lap of courtly ladies are often a symbol of lust in the iconographic representations of the
Middle Ages. An illustrative example is offered by the representation of carefree youth and worldly pleasures in the
Triumph of Death (1336-41) fresco at the Camposanto in Pisa. Besides their symbolic meaning, lap dogs were also
favoured by the fashionable ladies of the time. In fact, on the frontispiece to Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1473/74) one of the ladies attending on Margaret of Burgundy is holding a small dog in her arms.
printer’s 1476 edition and “the book that Geffrey Chaucer had made”.27 These discrepancies consisted in abridgements, “thynges left out” and spurious verses added to what was supposed to be the poet’s authentic work. As Lerer has pointed out, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the auctor was only “one participant in an enterprise shared by scriptor, compliator and commentator” (1993: 11). Since auctoritas rested with texts rather than individuals, the medieval habit of reading was “a way of engaging with the text by commenting, recasting, and in some sense re-inscribing it” (Lerer 1993: 12). Chaucer’s own texts circulated in quires or booklets during his lifetime and none of the eighty-two fragmentary or complete manuscripts which were preserved is an autograph. The poet’s admonition to his scribe in Chaucers Wordes unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn for his negligence in copying reveals the author’s preoccupation with the textual integrity of his own works in a cultural context in which manuscripts were continuously transformed through amendments and interpolations. Conversely, in the course of the fifteenth century the concept of authority was gradually transferred from the text to the name of an individual author which became the expression of “the relationships of power and control articulated by a culture that requires and receives the literary fictions of itself” (Lerer 1993: 10). Chaucer’s name was relocated from the colophons of manuscripts, in which he was called a “compiler”, to the front pages of the printed editions of his works. The process culminated in Speght’s 1598 edition of the poet’s collected works, with its elaborate frontispiece and the page containing Chaucer’s supposed portrait, genealogical tree and coat of arms. To reduce Caxton’s preoccupation with the authenticity of the Chaucerian text to a mere rhetorical flourish, employed to veil his market strategy, is to negate his important contribution to the process of English literary canon formation which began in the fifteenth century.28 The fact that printer had embarked upon the costly enterprise of commissioning original woodcuts for his 1483 edition has been explained through his attempt to encourage second-time buying.29 While this may be true, once placed in the text, the woodcuts became more than mere enticements for second-time buying. They became part of the material form of the Canterbury Tales, and as such they are evidence of a specific moment in the semiotic productivity of the text. Moreover, they function as a threshold to Chaucer’s tales which inevitably influences readers’ response to the tales.
The General Prologue is illustrated with twenty-two woodcuts. They reinforce the relationship between tale and teller, since they appear both before the portrayals of the pilgrims and
27
The quotations are taken from W. J. B. Crotch, The Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton, London: Oxford UP, 1956, pp. 90-91. All further quotations from Caxton’s 1483 Proem are from this edition.
28 Caxton’s engagement with literary history, his involvement with the intellectual contents and material forms of
literary reproduction are beautifully discussed by Kuskin. See W. Kuskin, Symbolic Caxton, Notre Dame (IN): Notre Dame UP, 2008.
at the beginning of their respective tales.30 Yet their index-like function is undermined by Caxton’s occasional use of the same block to represent different pilgrims.31 A possible iconographic source for Caxton’s woodcuts are the “Oxford fragments” (John Rylands Library, MS English 63 and Rosenbach Library, MS 1084/2) or some no longer extant manuscript related to this codex (Carlson 1997: 27-28). Hodnett has argued that the woodcuts in Caxton’s edition are not copies of foreign blocks, but represent examples of original English wood-cutting (1973: 3).
The image of the pilgrims at table, presumably at the Tabard Inn, is one of Caxton’s most widely known and more often reproduced woodcuts (Fig. 2.3).32 The woodcut is placed at the top of page C4r, above the single text-column, which begins with the lines:
Gret chere made our ost to vs eurychon, And to the soupere sette he vs anon. He serued vs with vytayll at the beste
Strong was the wyne & wel drynke vs lyste. (747-50)33
These lines, as well as the woodcut which illustrates them, help to shift the focus from the description of the single pilgrims to the representation of the community of storytellers, a fact also confirmed by the number of pilgrims comprised in the woodcut. As is well known, only twenty-three tell stories although Chaucer mentions thirty pilgrims including himself. In the Ellesmere, the importance of the telling function and of the narrative frame had been stressed by means of the twenty-three miniatures which represented only the storytellers. In Caxton’s woodcut, the storytellers are accompanied by a twenty-fourth figure which critics have largely disregarded so far: a fool with his traditional asses’ ears and coxcomb.34 He is represented in profile, as if in movement, and seems to be slightly turned towards the Monk and the courtly lady who occupy the central part of the picture. His posture and the place he occupies on the further right side of the table do not make him immediately visible. This may help explain why the fool has passed unnoticed despite the fact that the woodcut has been frequently reproduced on the covers and title-pages of academic books. His presence can be partially explained through the fact that in fifteenth-century London, certain inns were important cultural centres, where innkeepers were often figures from the entertainment world who acted as animateurs (Burke 1978: 110).35 So Caxton may have had Harry Bailly in mind when giving instructions concerning the twenty-fourth figure to the woodcutter. The
30 The woodcuts representing Chaucer the pilgrim, the Nun’s Priest and the Second Nun only appear at the beginning of
their respective tales, since they are not described in the General Prologue.
31 The same blocks are used to represent: the Physician and the Parson; the Merchant, the Franklin and the Summoner. 32
In fact, it appears on the front cover as well as on the title page of Studies in the Age of Chaucer, published by the New Chaucer Society.
33 The quotation is from the British Library copy of Caxton’s second edition of the Canterbury Tales (STC 5083). 34 As far as I am aware, only Driver (2004: 35) mentions the fool in a brief reference to the woodcut depicting the
pilgrims at table, but she does not discuss the implications of his presence.
presence of the fool is rich with meanings which reveal crucial aspects of the reception of the poet’s portrayal of the Prioress as well as of the Canterbury Tales as a whole.
The only clearly visible woman in the woodcut is the courtly lady seated at the Monk’s right side. Other female figures are difficult to discern, since about half of the pilgrims in the woodcut are represented with their backs towards the viewer. My hypothesis is that the courtly lady stands for the Prioress. Evidence for this identification is offered by Pynson’s 1492 woodcut in which the woman seated next to the Monk is the Prioress (Fig. 2.4).36 In Pynson’s illustration, however, she wears the veil and wimple typical of nuns and her features are easily recognizable as those of the Prioress represented in the woodcut which precedes her portrayal and her tale. Caxton, instead, identifies and separates the two aspects of Madame Eglentyne’s identity and offers two distinct images: the nun (Fig. 2.2), neatly placed before her description in the General Prologue and at the beginning of her tale, and the courtly lady, set in the group image, where the single identities of the pilgrims seem to fade at the same time that the community steps into the spotlight.
The Prioress’s youth and beauty as well as her stylish attire in the group image is in stark contrast with her individual portrait, where she is represented as an aged woman austerely dressed and wearing on her right arm a huge rosary. In the individual portrait, the woodcutter goes even further than the Ellesmere artist in attempting to purge the image of the Prioress of any unorthodox elements. Not only is she represented as an aged woman, but her forehead is completely covered by the veil in accordance with late-fifteenth-century convent rules.37 Moreover, the golden brooch that Chaucer mentions in the description of Madame Eglentyne ends up as a pendant for the rosary in a position which makes its pious function unmistakable. By contrast, the Prioress-as-courtly lady is wearing a high conical headdress with a gauzy veil running from the eye level to the peak of the bonnet, worn by fashionable women of the nobility in fifteenth-century France and Burgundy.38 As Scott has shown, the steeple-shaped bonnet with a single veil draped over it came into increasing favour in the 1460s as part of a widespread “spiky aesthetic” (1980: 174, 176). It was not only an expression of stylishness but also of extravagance. A grotesque in the left margin of a folio from a fifteenth-century Book of Hours pokes fun at such headdresses in that it represents a peacock with
36 The Wife of Bath, identified by her hat which resembles a “bokeler”, is seen in profile in the lower right margin of
Pynson’s woodcut.
37
Hodges has argued that in Chaucer’s time the height of nuns’ veils was not contemplated in religious records concerned with the propriety of nuns’ headdresses. Conversely, injunctions against the use of expensive fabrics such as silk or burnet were frequent (2005: 45-46). The artist who worked on the Ellesmere miniature could represent the Prioress’s broad forehead without the danger of attracting criticism. In the late fifteenth century, monastic rules began to regulate both the quality of the fabric and the height of nuns’ veils .
38 For a brief description and pictures of hennins, see F. Boucher, Histoire du costume en Occident de l’antiquité à nos
jours, Paris: Flammarion, 1983, p. 203. See also J. Laver, Costumes Through the Ages, London: Thames and Hudson,
the head of a woman wearing hennin (Bodleian Library, MS Douce 80, fol. 101v). A fool with ass’s ears faces the peacock-woman in the right margin of the same folio suggesting that vanity is often associated with lust. In a late-fifteenth-century manuscript of the Roman de la Rose, it is Largesse who is depicted wearing hennin (Bodleian Library, MS Douce 364, fol. 92r). Given the fact that the Roman is, among many other things, an allegory of the sexual act, Largesse is to be intended as generosity in love giving. The motif of the fool gives the finishing touch to Madame Eglentyne’s portrait and reflects a reading of the motto “Amor vincit omnia” in strictly secular terms. As Pigeaud has pointed out,
[…] the presence of a fool in a company often indicates the ‘sensual’ character of a gathering of men and women, whether it takes place in a love garden, an inn, or on a fool’s ship. The fool represents, as it were, the key to the type of message being illustrated: he seems to indicate that there is something sinful and irrational going on here. (1987: 50)
In a fifteenth-century engraving by Master E. S., known as the Large Love Garden, two amorous couples seated at a richly garnished table are depicted in the background of a hortus conclusus (Fig. 2.6). In the foreground, a woman wearing a divided hennin grabs at a fool’s coat uncovering his genitals. These examples are evidence for a well consolidated iconographic tradition which in the fifteenth century associated extravagant headdresses with vanity, and lustful women with fools. This does not come as a surprise since one of the distinguishing traits of fools was their exaggerated sexuality symbolised by the bauble they carried around: a fool’s head on top of a phallus (Willeford 1969: 11). According to Welsford, the fool became an essential component of fifteenth-century social life. He was hired by corporations, kings and noblemen. He was requested in taverns and brothels as well as pageants, processions and mysteries (1935: 121). From the liminal position which he occupied outside the walls of the city he gradually moved towards the centre of the stage of social life and became an instrument of social satire in the guise of the wise fool. As Foucault argued in his highly influential study, starting with the fifteenth-century, folly and fools seem to have obsessed Western imagination (1998: 22). Within only ten years from Caxton’s publication of his second edition of the Canterbury Tales, Sebastian Brant published his famous Ship of Fools with its bitter criticism of corrupt morals.
In this context of profound interest in fools and folly it would be naïve to presume that Caxton was not aware of the implications the presence of the fool had for the figure of the Prioress in particular, and for the group of pilgrims in general. It would be just as naïve to believe that diligent readers such as the gentleman who rebuked Caxton for the discrepancies between the printer’s 1476 edition and what the customer considered to be the “authentic” Chaucer would not have perceived the sexual and subversive connotations of the fool’s presence. Moreover, even if the inclusion of the fool in the company of pilgrims was the result of the woodcutter’s own interpretive
intervention, it remains a mystery how such an intervention might have escaped Caxton’s notice. My contention is that the woodcut representing the group of pilgrims is a deliberate act of subversion in that it reaffirms the power of collective laughter as well as the function of the fool as truth-teller in a century in which collective laughter was regarded with suspicion by secular and ecclesiastical authorities. If in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries carnival laughter had been an instrument of social cohesion rather than subversion (Bachtin 1979: 93), the fifteenth century witnesses a growing diffidence towards the festa stultorum, although fools and folly seem to haunt more than ever the imagination of painters and humanist scholars.
The fool is also the instrument through which Caxton tells a truth about the Prioress which could not be explicitly stated without risking censure. It enables him to present the reader with two images of Madame Eglentyne: the orthodox, acceptable image of the nun and the less acceptable, but equally valid secular image of the courtly lady. In representing the courtly lady as lustful he unmasks the spiritual pretenses of courtly love which, after all, were veiling a very different reality. Moreover, the fool’s presence in the woodcut seems to emphasise “solaace” and “myrthe” over “sentence”, so providing a reminder that Chaucer had not written only moral and didactic tales but also tales that “sownen into synne” (X, 1085). It may be Caxton’s way of delicately poking fun at the process of canon formation through which Chaucer was being transformed into the father of English poetry, the poet laureate, whose works were about “holynesse and virtue”, “noblesse”, “wysedom”, and “gentylesse” (Crotch 1956: 90) and whose pedigree would appear in the editions of his collected works: a flawless but unreal cultural construct to which Caxton himself had brought his contribution through his editorial work and engagement with literary history.
The Ellesmere miniature representing the Prioress and the two woodcuts in Caxton’s 1483 edition of the Canterbury Tales are important examples of how in the fifteenth century images were shaped by and contributed to promoting specific ideologies. The commissioner of the Ellesmere manuscript strived to offer an image of the Prioress purged of equivocal elements with an eye to the aristocratic owner for whom the manuscript was being prepared. Caxton himself probably gave precise instructions to the woodcutter as far as the collocation and the content of the woodcuts was concerned. The portrait of the Prioress in the woodcut which precedes her description in the General Prologue and introduces her tale is characterised by austerity and conventionalism. The young beautiful nun of the Ellesmere miniature gives way to the middle-aged woman whose orthodoxy is thus reinforced. Only in the group image, where individual identities seem to fade and the community steps into the spotlight, can the unorthodox side of the Prioress’s identity find expression. Although the courtly lady and the fool are subversive presences, their position remains marginal in Caxton’s Canterbury Tales and, with the exception of Wynkyne de Worde’s 1498
edition, in which he reuses Caxton’s blocks, they silently disappear without a trace from the subsequent editions of the tales. Besides being expressions of the dominating ideology, these images are precious examples of how and by whom Chaucer’s portrayal of the Prioress and her tale were received. Both the aristocratic commissioner of the Ellesmere and Caxton’s gentlemen customers would probably have approved of the conventional, unequivocal representation of the Prioress. Yet Chaucer’s portrayal of Madame Eglentyne precluded univocal readings then as it does now, and that is what continues to make the Prioress life-like and fascinating to the contemporary reader.
