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The Green Yeoman as Loathly Lady: The Friar's Parody of the Wife of Bath's Tale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Penn R. Szittya
Penn R. Szittya*
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington, D. C.
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Abstract

The Friar’s Tale is replete with distinct verbal echoes of the Wife of Bath’s Tale that point to subtler structural similarities: clear parallels exist between the Friar’s green Yeoman and the Wife’s Loathly Lady in their mysterious shape-shifting, their knowledge of unearthly secrets, and their radical metamorphoses as each tale ends. The Friar’s quiet parody of the Wife’s romantic idealism contributes to a pattern familiar in the architectonics of the Canterbury Tales. The consecutive tales of Wife, Friar, and Summoner form a dramatic triad exactly parallel to the well-known triad involving the Knight, Miller, and Reeve where, as here, the unity of the three turns upon the parody in the pivotal second tale. The Friar’s parody of the Wife also suggests that the thematic center of the Third Fragment is in the idea of maistrie, and coincidentally, suggests that the Friar’s and the Summoner’s Tales do not interrupt the Marriage Group but advance its chief theme.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , May 1975 , pp. 386 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1975

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References

Notes

1 See William C. Stokoe, Jr., “Structure and Intention in the First Fragment of the Canterbury Tales” University of Toronto Quarterly, 21 (1952), 120–27; Charles A. Owen, Jr., “Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Aesthetic Design in Stories of the First Day,” English Studies, 35 (1954), 49–56. See also Paul Ruggiers' excellent discussion in his The Art of the Canterbury Tales (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1965), pp. 53–58.

2 See esp. Anne Righter's Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962) for a fascinating discussion of the role of concentric fictions in Renaissance drama.

3 All citations hereafter are to F. N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton, 1957).

4 See Walter Clyde Curry, Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1926), pp. 37–47, for a clinical diagnosis of the Summoner's disease as alopicia, which was specifically a type of leprosy. See more recently Thomas J. Garbáty, “The Summoner's Occupational Disease,” Medical History, 7 (1963), 348–58.

5 On the Marriage Group, see esp. George Lyman Kittredge, “Chaucer's Discussion of Marriage,” Modern Philology, 9 (1911–12), 435–67; William W. Lawrence, Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1950); and Robert E. Kaske's recent article, “Chaucer's Marriage Group,” in Chaucer the Love Poet, ed. Jerome Mitchell and William Provost (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1973), pp. 45–65.

6 It is worth noting that the interruptions of one pilgrim by another elsewhere have thematic significance; see, e.g., R. E. Kaske, “The Knight's Interruption of the Monk's Tale,” ELH, 24 (1957), 249–68.

7 For an excellent discussion of the predatory imagery in the Friar's Tale, see Janette Richardson, “Hunter and Prey: Functional Imagery in ‘The Friar's Tale,‘” English Miscellany, 12 (1961), 9–20; rpt. in Chaucer's Mind and Art, ed. A. C. Cawley (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1969), pp. 155–65.

8 Cf. WBProl., Il. 817–20 with FT, Il. 1329–31 for “maistrie” which lasts “terme of aile hir lyves”; WBProl., 11. 44a-c with FT, 11. 1347–51 for a double entendre on “purs”; WB Prol., 11. 622–26 with FT, 11. 1355–58 for multiplicity of lovers; WB Prol., II. 1–3, 119–24 with FT, 11. 1515–22 and 1636–38 on experience and authority; WBProl., 11. 231–34 and 379–80 with FT, 11. 1462–65 on the manifold wiles and appearances of women and devils; WBProl., 11. 224–28 with FT, II. 1430–40 on the necessity for deceit; WBProl., 11. 15461 with FT, 11. 1489–90 for the double affliction of body and soul.

9 Hugh L. Hennedy, “The Friar's Summoner's Dilemma,” Chaucer Review, 5 (1971), 213–17, suggests that it is not only the “rebekke's” curse but the somonour's own curse that damns him. This would make the parallel with the Wife's tale even more exact. See also Richard H. Passon, “ ‘Entente’ in Chaucer's Friar's Tale,” Chaucer Review, 2(1968), 166–71.

10 See esp. the devil's comments about the necessity for dissembling in his occupation (11. 1426–33), about the many faces and forms a devil can wear (11. 1462–67), about his power to afflict both body and soul (11. 1489–98) and his insistence upon experience rather than aucloritee as a valid basis of judgment (11. 1515–20 and 1636–38).

11 There are a number of lesser parallels between the narrative triads of the first and third fragments. In both of the prologues of the second tales, the tellers (Miller and Friar) imply that the preceding tale was not all they might have wished for. In the same prologues, both Reeve and Summoner, respectively, are attacked and in turn interrupt the tellers' discourse. Both the Reeve's and the Summoner's tales seem to be set in the North country. Both the Miller's and the Friar's tales open with the same formula: “Whilom ther was dwellynge at Oxenford / A riche gnof” (i, 11. 318788); “Whilom ther was dwellynge in my contrée / An erchdeken” (iii, 11. 1301–02). The Merchant's Tale, but no other, opens similarly.

12 “Chaucer's Discussion of Marriage,” Modern Philology, 9 (1911–12), 435–67.

13 See Matt, xxiii. 10–12: “Neither be called masters; for one only is your Master, the Christ. He who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.” There is no evidence, of course, that the Wife recognizes the Christian implications of what she is saying.

14 The Wife's fifth marriage fell out, by her account, in similar accord. See 11. 813–25.