Introduction 1. Images of market trade 2. Regulation of the market 3. The behaviour of market traders 4. An evolving market morality? Conclusion Bibliography.

Chaucer: Motive and Mask in the "General Prologue"

Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200-1500

The General Prologue is often called a picture of its age and, frequently inthe next breath, a satire. In English Lit. this usually draws a stern lectureabout confusing the distinction between literature and history, but in thisessay, unobserved by my sophomores, I propose to talk about the General Prologue as a picture of its age and then, tentatively, about some uses suchhistory might be put to by historians and literary students.

Chaucer' General Prologue as History and Literature

C HAUCER GIVES us no explicit portrait headed "A Poet ther was" in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. Yet the entire Prologue, like so many vernacular invitations to narrative from the twelfth century on, is designed to introduce the poet, describe his task, and gain the goodwill of the audience. Scholars generally agree that the later medieval practice of composing prologues depended on the grammar school study of rhetorical handbooks and classical poetry. By the fourteenth century a selfreflexive prologue conforming to handbook definitions had become more or less de rigueur for aristocratic narrative, both secular and religious.' Chaucer's Prologue, though longer and more complex than most, is no exception. It raises expectations in just the areas the handbooks propose, promising to take up important matters of natural and social order, moral character, and religion and outlining the organization the work will follow. Above all, the poet presents himself, as the handbooks direct, to ingratiate himself with his listeners or readers and render them receptive to his argument. Chaucer's Prologue, however, meets these generic expectations in entirely unexpected ways. Most recent critics have recognized that it does not provide a neat, straightforward portrait of the poet. Chaucer's authority remains elusive, exceeding the requirements of the humility topos. Furthermore, whatever potential there may be for coherence in his self-presentation tends to be undermined by the several abrupt changes of style and subject. In fact, the parts of the General Prologue seem to function as several attacks on a beginning, each of them probing from a different angle a problem that traditionally belonged to prologues, "How shall I begin and to what purpose?" At first the various styles and subjects juxtaposed in the Prologue appear to suggest no clear answer. Moreover, the parts, or attempts at beginning, are governed not by a single, cumulatively enriched and deepened figure of the poet but, as I argue, by a series of impersonations. None of these taken alone reveals the poet's presence fully. Nor, taken together, do they reveal the poet literary tradition might have led readers to expect. The General Prologue, I suggest, contains not one voice of the poet but three major attempts at authorial voicing. Each constitutes part of a complex argument about the nature of the poet and poetry in terms authorized by well-known medieval theory and practice. The first of these voices declaims the April opening with the learned assurance and scientific attention of a clerk deliberating in venerable literary formulas on the causes of things. The last is a tavern keeper's, urging good cheer and play for material profit. In between we hear the modest, devout "I" of Chaucer the pilgrim, intent on giving systematic order to his experience. But the voices of the other pilgrims so intrude on his own that he is left at last simply with genial apologies for failing to do what he had promised. All the voices are finally Chaucer's, of course, all of them impersonations. And all participate in the poet's complex, unexpected argument concerning his character(s) and purpose.2 For the most part, only the voice of the pilgrim has been related to Chaucer's self-presentation. In his well-known and brilliantly persuasive essay, E. Talbot Donaldson urges a separation of the pilgrim from the poet. He argues that the pilgrim persona is a comic device that the poet manipulates as an ironic foil for his own incisive wit. The poet, he says, "operates in a realm which is above and subsumes those in which Chaucer the man and Chaucer the pilgrim have their being" (936). Few critics have questioned the isolation of the pilgrim persona as Chaucer's principal foil in the Prologue, though several have challenged Donaldson's way of explaining the relationship between the persona and the poet or the man. In an important article and in his book, Donald Howard argues for a more complex and mysterious relationship between the pilgrim and the poet than Donaldson proposes. The pilgrim, he suggests,

http://engl381-mueller.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/barbara.nolan.boethius.pdf

"A Poet Ther Was": Chaucer's Voices in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

�NT STUDJF.S tr wing Chauw's Cant.,bury Tale,"' a pmduct of, and a response to, the emergence of capitalism have given new life to an assumption running through much of Chaucer criticism, namely, that Chaucer's poem provides a consistent satire of commercial values. 1 This assumption has been questioned, however, by Patricia Eberle, who argues, following the work of Jill Mann, that Chaucer's General Prologue, in particular, although saturated with commercial terms, departs radically from the traditional genre of venality satire. Eberle demonstrates that, rather than condemning commercial values, Chaucer takes for granted his courtly audience's familiarity with and expertise in the ways of getting and spending, which as often as not he treats neutrally, as subjects of interest, not of scorn. 2 I would like to challenge another idea related to the view that Chaucer

Love So Dearly Bought: The Terms of Redemption in The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer is generally recognized as a specifically literary author; he is called the “father of English poetry” and seen as the first of the holy trinity of English literature, comprised also of William Shakespeare and John Milton. However, Chaucer (like Shakespeare) wrote his poetry not for literary readers, but for oral performance in front of a hearing audience. This historical fact, although acknowledged, has been largely ignored in studies of Chaucer’s style, which is seen as containing a type of oral residue or as an affectation of speech as Chaucer ambitiously looks forward to a future of readers silently reading his poetry. In this article I argue that, since all of Chaucer’s works were written for hearing audiences, it is anachronistic to assume that he made any distinction whatsoever between the reading and hearing of his literary works, and that his style is best understood as a versatile adaptation of language to suit both silent and vocalized readings of his texts.

Chaucer: Motive and Mask in the "General Prologue"

Citations

Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200-1500

Chaucer' General Prologue as History and Literature

"A Poet Ther Was": Chaucer's Voices in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

Love So Dearly Bought: The Terms of Redemption in The Canterbury Tales

The Myth of an Oral Style in Chaucer’s Poetry