Tag: Canterbury Tales

Posted on

Undergrad Wednesdays – Emily’s Modes of Expression in the “Knight’s Tale:” A Precursor to the #MeToo Movement

[This post was written in the spring 2018 semester for Karrie Fuller's course on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It responds to the prompt posted here.]

The “Knight’s Tale” is the first tale to appear in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, just after the General Prologue. In it, two imprisoned knights, Palamon and Arcite, vie for the affections of Emily, an Amazonian woman brought back to Athens by King Theseus as a spoil of war.  After seeing her in the garden on a May morning, Palamon and Arcite fall madly in love with Emily, and they eventually duel to the death for her hand in marriage. Emily and her modes of expression (or lack thereof) are interesting, particularly because this tale, in more ways than one, sets the tone for the rest of the Tales. Emily is primarily relegated to a realm of silence in this text; however, she expresses herself intermittently through weeping and a singular, emotional prayer. This blog post will examine Emily’s treatment and expression in the “Knight’s Tale” in order to analyze the plight of women in the Middle Ages as presented through Chaucer’s poetry. Ultimately, it will reveal the disappointingly small distance we have traveled in terms of gender parity in the decades since Chaucer was writing. Indeed, it posits that Emily is one of the early victims whose voice deserves to be read in the context of the modern justice movement, #MeToo.

Arguably, in close contest with her beauty, the most striking characteristic of Emily in this tale is her silence. Throughout this tale, the knights speak amply of her beauty, “that fairer was to sene / Than is the lylie upon his stalke grene / And fresher than the May with floures newe, / For with the rose colour stroof hire hewe,” and of their desire to wed her. However, she is stunningly quiet on this subject, with one private exception of prayer, which will be examined later (Chaucer 65; lines 1035-38). Indeed, Theseus states, “I speke as for my suster Emelye,” when he announces the prospect of a duel to Palamon and Arcite (Chaucer 76; line 1833). Emily is always in the background, being talked about, but never talked to. Her silence can be interpreted, especially for modern readers, as a symbol of women’s oppression in the Middle Ages. Although, ironically, Emily is the driver for the entire tale, it is only as a tool for the knights to manipulate and fight over in order to prove the supremacy of their masculinity and honor. She has no agency, and this is mirrored in the silencing of her voice.

Although Emily’s silence is the most symbolic indicator of her lack of agency in the text, her powerful appeal to Diana before the battle also illustrates her and other women’s powerlessness. She laments, “I / Desire to ben a mayden al my lyf. / … And noght to ben a wyf and be with / childe” (Chaucer 84; lines 2305-10). Further, she pleads with Diana, “Bihoold, goddesse of clene chastitee, / The bitter teeris that on my chekes falle! / Syn thou art mayde and kepere of us alle, / My maydenhede thou kepe and wel conserve. / And whil I lyve, a mayde I wol thee serve” (Chaucer 84; lines 2326-30). Emily’s true feelings are only revealed in the sanctity and privacy of prayer, and even when she is her most vulnerable self, her desires and needs are cast in the wind in favor of what the knights of the tale desire (and, it would seem, what the gods command). Shortly after she cries in anguish, begging Diana to spare her from marriage, Diana appears unto her and tells her that she must be wed. This interaction begs the question, to what extent does Fortune play a role in this text, and to what extent are the outcomes predetermined? Both gods and Fortune appear in this text and affect the events that unfold, introducing questions of the role of agency in the lives of mankind, and especially women in the Middle Ages. Do women have any agency, or are they doomed to live as slaves to men and their desires? Emily’s prayer is a powerful glimpse into the emotional underpinnings of marriage and agency for women during this time period.

A third and final mode of expression illustrated in this text is weeping, which Emily does periodically throughout the text. There are two categories of weeping that take place in the “Knight’s Tale”: weeping over a man or men, and weeping in prayer. At the start of the tale, upon Theseus’ return, a “compaignye of ladyes” (Chaucer 63; line 898) weeps: “swich a cry and swich a wo they make, / That in this world nys creature lyvynge / That herde swich another waymentynge” (Chaucer 63; lines 900-03). Similarly, when Arcite dies, Emily “weepe bothe eve and morwe” (Chaucer 91; line 2821). In juxtaposition with the silence that dominates the majority of this tale, the weeping that punctuates the remaining spaces paints Emily as an emotional, rather than stoic, figure. Her emotions are compartmentalized – either she is entirely silent or highly emotional. In this way, Chaucer oversimplifies Emily, and, arguably, all women, through these extremes. Perhaps the only time Emily weeps and talks, thus complicating this binary, is when she is praying to Diana. In her uncertainty, she “for the feere thus hast she cried / And weepe that it was pitee for to heere” (Chaucer 84; lines 2344-45). The weeping that is peppered throughout this text speaks, in conjunction with the overwhelming silence, to the plight of women in the Middle Ages. Their lives are almost entirely controlled by men, particularly in Emily’s case. And so, she weeps, remains silent, and passionately pleas with Diana, only to be denied both understanding and her desires. Emily’s rather binary expression of emotion indicates that women have little choice, if any, over their lives, and emphasizes the roles of Fate and Fortune in place of the agency of women.

In sum, Emily’s modes of expression – silence, weeping, and prayer – offer a glimpse of the struggle of a medieval woman; however, this tale is entirely relevant to modern women, too. Even still, over six hundred years later, women experience misogynistic attempts to control their bodies and fates. One need not look far to discover this truth – no farther than Twitter, in fact, where the hashtag #MeToo has documented thousands of instances of abuse and entitlement on the part of men seeking control over women. In popular culture, too, there are examples of men dueling over a woman everywhere – The Bachelorette, as one example, not to mention the plethora of young adult fiction that employs a similar structure. Chaucer’s depiction of women in the Middle Ages is concerning and, of course, a more literal illustration of silencing women; however, the underlying implications of male control and domination plague our society to this very day.

Ashtin Ballard
University of Notre Dame

Works Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Knight’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales, ed. Robert Boenig and Andrew Taylor, 2nd ed., Broadview Press, 2012.

Featured Image: Emily Gathering Flowers, 1882, by Mary Eliza Haweis, Chaucer for Children
Posted on

What the Wife of Bath Still Has to Teach Us

As a medievalist who is both interested and personally invested in the representation of women’s bodies, I am acutely aware of how our gendered ideology hearkens back to the Middle Ages. The ways in which the Canterbury Tales mirror contemporary discourse and practices around sexual violence are abundant, and though I know them well through my work with Chaucer, they remain alarming.

A sign outside a strip club near Denver, Colorado, an image that accompanied an article in The Guardian, dated December 3, 2017

Needless to say, I was hardly surprised when, in October of 2016, Sonja Drimmer and Damian Fleming described in a blog post to In the Middle the remarkable relevance of the Miller’s Tale, in which Nicholas corners an unsuspecting Alisoun and grabs her by her genitals[i]:

“And prively he caughte hire by the queynte,
And syde, ‘Ywis, but if ich have my wille,
For deerne love of thee, lemman, I spille.’”[ii]

Used to describe Alisoun’s genitalia as “a clever or curious device or ornament,” the word “queynte” employs both of its Middle English definitions, as it is simultaneously a “punning” on a more modern derogatory term for the vaginal organs.[iii] That Alisoun “sproong as a colt dooth in the trave”[iv] to escape Nicholas’s hands on her vulva demonstrates that his fondling of her body is not only unexpected but also unwanted.[v] What Chaucer’s narrative describes is sexual assault.

A friar grabs a woman by her genitals in an image from a fourteenth-century manuscript, The Taymouth Hours, London, British Library MS Yates Thompson 13, fol. 177. Specifically citing the man’s actions as lechery (“lecherie”), the French caption condemns his behavior and serves as a warning for young women, who would have been the text’s primary audience. The Wife of Bath begins her tale with an allusion to the prevalence of friars in woods like those where the maiden is raped by the knight.[vi] 
The Miller’s Tale is, of course, a fabliau, characterized by bawdy humor intended to make the audience laugh. The genre, however, should not negate the inappropriateness of Nicholas’s actions, and if it renders them humorous, it does so at women’s expense. If further evidence is needed for the genre’s proclivity for misogyny, one needs only to consider the Reeve’s Tale, which follows the Miller’s and appropriates rape as its punchline. While critics have traditionally navigated the fabliau genre with the argument that the “enthusiastically unchaste wives”[vii] escape ridicule at the narrative’s end, the portion of this approach that requires the casual dismissal of sexual assault merits reconsideration, especially because consent cannot be given retroactively. That being said, Alisoun does consent to a sexual relationship with Nicholas, but only after he has violated her. Sexual contact without consent is assault – period.

Our own cultural conversation around sexual assault hasn’t ebbed since last fall. On the contrary, its media current seems to be only gaining momentum. On Tuesday, December 6, Time magazine revealed their 2017 Person of the Year: “The Silence Breakers,” the many women, as well as some men, who have recently been compelled to share their experiences as victims of sexual harassment and assault. Primarily composed of women’s voices, the massive movement demands that the men perpetuating this violence be held accountable for their actions. Meanwhile, Brock Turner, the former Stanford University student found guilty of three counts of felony sexual assault early last year, served only three months of a grossly lenient, six-month sentence in a county jail and began the process of appealing his conviction the same week as Time’s cover release.[viii] According to the New York Times, approximately 60 pages of the 172-page appeal document emphasize the intoxication of Turner’s victim on the night he raped her.[ix] As far as Turner is concerned, the violence he committed is still not his fault, suggesting that accountability can only take us so far, and, frankly, it’s not nearly far enough.

Time cover announcing the “Silence Breakers” as Person of the Year, released online December 6, 2017

Current events have inspired me to return to the Canterbury Tales, this time to the Wife of Bath. In what is an often cited conundrum of the Wife’s tale, the knight who rapes the maiden at the story’s outset is rewarded at its end, while his female victim vanishes from the narrative entirely. While some critics see the maiden’s disappearance as a problematic act of erasure, I’d like to consider what can be achieved through the Wife’s attention to the rapist, rather than his victim.

The first page of the Wife of Bath’s Tale from the Ellesmere Chaucer, a fifteenth-century manuscript housed at the Huntington Library, San Marino, MSS EL 26 C 9, fol. 72 r

In a tale that focuses more on remedy than reaction, the Wife conveys how the knight should not merely be punished but, rather, reformed. To weight the punishment Arthur initially proposes against the repercussions for contemporary sexual aggressors is a telling measure, as Arthur would have the knight executed for his actions. Guinevere, however, intervenes and – after her husband agrees that she should sentence the knight “at hir wille” – challenges him instead to discover what women desire most.[x] The quest upon which the knight embarks does not lead him to an explicit answer for her question, and his failure in this endeavor is, in my opinion, precisely the point: he must learn that women have wills of their own and understand that women’s wills should not be subsumed by men’s.

At the tale’s conclusion, it is only when the knight recognizes his wife’s will as equal to his own, a reflection of his reformed character, that he is rewarded. Admittedly, when the wife tells him he may choose to have her “foul and old” but “a trewe, humble wyf,” or “yong and fair” but unfaithful, neither option is ideal.[xi] But having just concluded her speech on “gentillesse,”[xii] through which she conveys how nobility originates in one’s character and is defined through one’s actions,[xiii] it would appear that the knight accepts the meaning of her words:

“My lady and my love, and wyf so deere,
I put me in youre wise governance;
Cheseth youreself which may be moost pleasance
And moost honour to yow and me also.”[xiv]

Not only does the knight address his wife with kindness and respect, but he also conveys that he has internalized the lesson she has taught him by deferring to her “wise governance” and imploring her to decide what kind of woman she wishes to be. Through his deliberate suspension of his own will to accommodate his wife’s, the knight demonstrates how his character has been reformed from the narrative’s beginning when he exerts his will over his female victim’s in his sexual assault on her body. In effect, the Wife of Bath’s Tale advocates for social reformation of masculinity as a proactive solution to sexual violence, situating punishment alone as a reactive and, thus, less productive response.

As a medieval scholar, I am dedicated to the idea that there is much we can learn from our past. As a literary scholar, I believe that studying literature can facilitate much of that learning. As a woman and a feminist, I wonder what can be gained by redirecting our collective gaze onto the perpetrators of sexual violence. Perhaps the Wife of Bath, a survivor of gendered violence herself, has a lesson she can teach us – and if there’s anything that can be learned, we must listen.

Emily McLemore
University of Notre Dame

[i] Drimmer, Sonja and Damian Fleming. “Not Subtle; Not Quaint.” In the Middle, 9 Oct. 2016.

[ii] Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Miller’s Tale. The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry D. Benson, Houghton, 1987, pp. 68-78, lines 3276-78.

[iii] Queynte] Middle English Dictionary, def. 1a, 2a.

[iv] Trave] an enclosure or a frame for restraining horses while they are being shod (Middle English Dictionary, def. b)

[v] Chaucer. The Miller’s Tale. The Riverside Chaucer, line 3282.

[vi] Chaucer. The Wife of Bath’s Tale. The Riverside Chaucer, pp. 116-22, lines 865-81.

[vii] Benson, Larry D. “The Canterbury Tales.” The Riverside Chaucer, pp. 8.

[viii] Stack, Liam. “Light Sentence for Brock Turner in Stanford Rape Case Draws Outrage.” New York Times, 6 Jun. 2016.

[ix] Salam, Maya. “Brock Turner is Appealing his Sexual Assault Conviction.” New York Times, 2 Dec. 2017.

[x] Chaucer. The Wife of Bath’s Tale. The Riverside Chaucer, lines 894-97.

[xi] Chaucer. The Wife of Bath’s Tale. The Riverside Chaucer, lines 1219-26.

[xii] Chaucer. The Wife of Bath’s Tale. The Riverside Chaucer, line 1211.

[xiii] Gentillesse] nobility of birth or rank, or nobility of character or manners (Middle English Dictionary, def. 1a, 2a)

[xiv] Chaucer. The Wife of Bath’s Tale. The Riverside Chaucer, lines 1230-33.

 

Posted on

Chaucer and Boccaccio: Anxiety of Influence?

Trecento Italy saw the “three crowns” of literature—Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio—whose contribution to Italian and European literature was immense and lasting. The literary communication between Italy and England of that century is a fascinating topic for historians, literary scholars, and common readers. In this piece of writing, we shall take a quick look into Chaucer’s possible “indebtedness” to Boccaccio, arguably the writer who is most like Chaucer among the three crowns of Trecento Italian literature.

Among the three writers, Boccaccio was arguably the one to whom Chaucer had the most natural affinity. They might have even met personally when both were in Florence in 1378, but sadly no evidence was found to prove it. On Chaucer’s second visit to Italy, he brought back copies of Boccaccio’s two great Italian poems, the Filostrato and the Teseida, which provided source material and inspiration for Chaucer’s own writings. In the House of Fame, the poetic invocations (II. 518-22) echo Teseida and several lines from Anelida and Arcite (1-21) are quite literal translations from the same work. Twelve stanzas from Teseida are adapted in the Parliament of Fowls (211-94) and Teseida also notably provides the plot for “The Knight’s Tale.” In “The Knight’s Tale,” Arcite calls himself “Philostrate”, literally the one “vanquished by love,” echoing the title of the poem Filostrato by Boccaccio.

Although direct borrowings are hard to prove, there are similarities and parallels between Boccaccio’s Amorosa visione and Chaucer’s House of Fame, between Boccacio’s Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. For modern readers, the latter comparison is very intriguing, not just because of the two works’ literary achievement and popularity, but also because their shared structure of “framed story” and possibly shared aim of depicting (and even healing) human society through the act of “group story-telling.” Notably, the famous Italian writer and director Pier Paolo Pasolini has adapted these two works (Il Decameron 1971 and  I racconti di Canterbury 1972), along with the  A Thousand and One Nights ( Il fiore delle Mille e una Notte 1974) in his Trilogy of Life movie series, with the intention of presenting the scope of the human world and the depth of humanity on the screen. As for the literary indebtedness, “The Franklin’s Tale” is generally accepted as being inspired from the fifth story of Day Ten in the Decameron as well as by the passage on the question of love in Filocolo (IV. 31-4).

Despite the affinity, similarity, and inter-texuality, Chaucer never mentions Boccaccio by name in his works (as a contrast, Chaucer mentions both Petrarch and Dante several times), nor does he mention Boccaccio’s works explicitly, which leads to the usual suspicion that Chaucer is under “the anxiety of influence.” However, we should remember that medieval authors had a different understanding of concepts like “plagiarism,” “adaptation” or “influence.” While literary scholars and historians are still trying hard to find evidence, more efforts should be given to the parallel reading of the two works, the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales—not just because it is almost a blank field to be explored, but also because it is pure pleasure to read them side by side!

Xiaoyi Zhang
PhD Candidate
University of Notre Dame