Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T07:39:32.042Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Prologue of the Wife of Bath's Tale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William E. Mead
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Chaucer's prologues and connecting links in the Canterbury Tales deserve special study, for they are by far the most characteristic and original part of his writings. When telling his tales he seems to feel himself in a measure bound to reproduce the stories as he finds them. In the general Prologue, ll. 731–736, he says:

      “Who-so shal telle a tale after a man,
      He moot reherce, as nv as ever he can,
      Everich a word, if it be in his charge,
      Al speke he never so rudeliche and large;
      Or elles he moot telle his tale untrewe,
      Or feyne thing, or finde wordes newe.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , 1901 , pp. 388 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1901

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Note 1 in page 388 I need scarcely remark that this paper does not profess to give a systematic account of Chaucer's sources for this Prologue, but rather to call attention to some matters that have, perhaps, not been sufficiently emphasized.

Note 1 in page 389 The Canon's Yeoman's Tale is also a confession—the only one of the Tales proper that falls into this form.

Note 1 in page 391 Cf. ll. 219–223.

Note 2 in page 391 Anglia, xiv, 238–267.

Note 3 in page 391 Works of Chaucer, Notes, etc, passim.

Note 4 in page 391 Studies in Chaucer. See Index.

Note 1 in page 392 Romaunt of the Rose, 4285–4300 (Skeat).

Roman de la Rose, 4529–4545 (Michel).

Note 1 in page 393 A similar sentiment is expressed in Béranger's poem, Ma Grand' Mère, to which Mr. S. Friedewald has kindly called my attention:

“Ma grand' mère, un soir à sa fête,

De vin pur ayant bu deux doigts,

Nous disait en branlant la lête:

Que d'amoureux j'eus autrefois!

Combien je regrette

Mon bras si dodu

Ma jambe bien faite, } (bis.)

Et le temps perdu !“

Note 1 in page 394 Some of the best touches in Chaucer's portrait of the Prioress are taken from this passage. Cf. Rom. de la R. (Michel), 14325–14373, and Prol. 127–135. Tyrwhitt noted the resemblance between these two passages.

Note 1 in page 395 “Blessed be god that I have wedded fyve!

Welcome the sixte, whan that ever he shal.“

(Prol. 44–45.)

This sentiment is apparently not in perfect accord with that of lines 474, 475, but there is no real contradiction.

Note 2 in page 395 The glaring contrast between the asceticism advocated in the Person's Tale and the license of this Prologue is sufficiently evident.

Note 1 in page 396 Even in works not ill-disposed the clerical bias appears in such passing remarks as the following:

“Because she (Eve) sinned in pride, he meeked her, saying: Thou shalt be under the power of man, and he shall have lordship over thee, and he shall put thee to affliction. Now is she subject to a man by condition and dread, which before was but subject by love.”—Caxton's Golden Legend (Hist. of Adam) (Ellis), i, p. 175. Cf. also Ancren Riwle (ed. Morton), pp. 51–54.

Note 2 in page 396 The Wife of Bath herself calls attention to this fact:

“For trusteth wel, it is an impossible

That any clerk wol speke good of wyves,

But-if it be of holy seyntes lyves.“ (688–690.)

Note 1 in page 397 I venture to call attention to a passage hitherto, I think, unnoticed. One can hardly doubt that in writing the passage beginning at l. 534, where he tells of the eagerness of the Wife of Bath to share with her friends her husband's secret confidences, Chaucer had in mind the long passage in the Roman de la Rose, where the process of wheedling secrets out of the husband is described in detail:

“Et quiconques dit à sa fame

Ses secrez, il en fait sa dame.

Nus homs qui soit de mère nés,

S'il n'est yvres ou forsenés,

Ne doit à fame révéler

Nule riens qui face à céler,

Se d'autrui ne le vuet oïr.

Miex vaudroit du païs foïr,

Que dire à fame chose à taire,

Tant soit loial ne débonaire;

Ne jà nul fait secré ne face,

S'il voit fame venir en place:

Car s'il i a péril de cors,

El le dira, bien le recors,

Combien que longement atende;

Et se nus riens ne l'en demande,

Le dira-ele vraiement,

Sens estrange amonestement.“ (17, 284–17, 301.)

The theme is continued, with illustrations, to l. 17,643.

Other cases are cited by Koeppel and Skeat.

Note 1 in page 398 For convenience in making comparisons I cite some of the more important passages from the Roman de la Rose (Michel), but these should be studied in their original setting:

Note 1 in page 401 Essays on Chaucer, pp. 295–306 (Chaucer Society).

Note 2 in page 401 The original passage from Theophrastus, though it is packed with bitter charges against women, contains no such scolding as fills the greater part of 11. 245–378 in the Prologue, and is the burden of the tirade in the Roman de la Rose, but contains only the following complaints which. reappear in part in the Prologue, 235 seq.:—

“Deinde per noctes totas garrulae conquestiones: Illa ornatior procedit in publicum: haec honoratur ab omnibus, ego in conuentu foeminarum misella despicior. Our aspiciebas uicinam ? Quid cum ancillula loquebaris? De foro ueniens quid attulisti? Non amicum habere possumus, non sodalem. Alterius amorem suum odium suspicatur. Si doctissimus praeceptor in qualibet urbium fuerit, nec uxorem relinquere, nec cum sarcina ire possumus. Pauperem alere difficile est, diuitem ferre tormentum.”—S. Hieron. Opera Omnia, ii, 37 (Frankfort, 1684).

Here we have suggestions for curtain-lectures, but not precisely of the type that the Wife of Bath affects. She throws back at her husband the things that he has said to her—if she may be believed.

Note 3 in page 401 Anglia, xiv, 254–255.

Note 1 in page 402 Particularly lines 235–378.

Note 2 in page 402 Note in particular the spiteful repetition of “Thou seist” (entirely lacking in Theophrastus), by which she makes out her husband to be a male shrew, as the husband really is in the Roman de la Rose. This is a very neat device of Chaucer's; for she dextrously puts her husband in the wrong, and pretends that he is (or has been) scolding her.

Note 3 in page 402 Cf. l. 489. The conception of wedlock as a purgatorial state was not invented by Chaucer, as the following lines show:

“Quid dicam breuiter esse coniugium ?

certe uel tartara, uel purgatorium.

Non est in tartara quies aut otium

nec dolor coniugis habet remedium.“

Golias de Coniuge non Ducenda, 197–200.

Note 1 in page 403 Cf. Gen. Prol., 179–181, and Skeat's note showing that Chaucer has reversed the meaning of the original; also, Nonne Preestes Tale, B. 4353–4356, etc.

Note 1 in page 403 Note especially Prol., 615–626.