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Chaucer's Nun's Priest Again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Arthur Sherbo
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Extract

      “Com neer, thou preest, come hyder, thou sir John!
      Telle us swich thyng as may oure hertes glade.
      Be blithe, though thou ryde upon a jade.
      What thogh thyn hors be bothe foul and lene?
      If he wol serve thee, rekke nat a bene.
      Looke that thyn herte be murie everemo.”
      “Yis, sir”, quod he, “yis, Hoost, so moot I go,
      But I be myrie, ywis I wol be blamed.”
      —Prologue, Nun's Priest's Tale
      “But by my trouthe, if thou were seculer,
      Thou woldest ben a trede‐foul aright.
      For if thou have corage as thou hast myght,
      Thee were nede of hennes, as I wene,
      Ya, moo than seven tymes seventene.
      See, whiche braunes hath this gentil preest,
      So gret a nekke, and swich a large breest!
      He loketh as a sperhauk with his yen;
      Him nedeth nat his colour for to dyen
      With brasile, ne with greyn of Portyngale.
      Now, sire, faire falle yow for youre tale!”
      —Epilogue, Nun's Priest's Tale
      The literary pastime of finding real-life models for characters in literature is a fascinating one. In proportion as the vital statistics of the object of the literary manhunt recede in time, the fascination grows. Something akin to the possession of occult powers is felt by the literary detective who can, from a foothold in the twentieth century, reach back three, four, or five hundred years and “get his man.” Admittedly there is a real value in this kind of scholarly effort, but there is also a very real danger. The danger arises from the pleasurable self-hypnosis that often accompanies these ventures. In this state of quasi-suspended judgment, we are not always responsible for our conclusions. It is my desire to examine the results of one of these ostensibly successful manhunts in an effort to suggest that the “culprit” was not actually apprehended after all.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 1: Issue 1 part 1 , March 1949 , pp. 236 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

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References

1 (New York: Holt, 1926), p. 223.

2 (New York: Holt, 1928), p. 508.

3 Manly, New Light, pp. 204–205.

4 Manly, ed., Canterbury Tales, p. 504. In another note in his edition he asks, “But what was the French of Stratford?” and answers, “We can hardly doubt that the fashion of speaking there was set by Queen Philippa's sister, Lady Elizabeth of Hainaut, and consequently that it was not Parisian French but the dialect of Hainaut.”

5 Chaucer and Bis Poetry (Harvard Univ. Press, 1915), p. 176.

6 J. M. Manly and Edith Rickert (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1940), ii, 95.

7 All quotations and line references are from F. N. Robinson, ed., Complete Works of Chaucer (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1933).

8 O. F. Emerson, “Some Notes on Chaucer and Some Conjectures”, PQ, ii (1923), 81–96.

9 Carleton Brown, “The Squire and the Number of the Canterbury Pilgrims”, MLN, xlix (1942), 216–222.

10 Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (1908), p. 255.

11 E. P. Kuhl, “Notes on Chaucer's Prioress”, PQ, ii (1923), 308.

12 Kittredge, op. cit., pp. 176–177.

13 In The Pearl, the anonymous poet, contemporary with Chaucer, uses “countrefete” to mean “be equal to” (1. 556).

14 Kuhl, op. cit., p. 307.

15 Op. cit., p. 307.

16 NED, “Sir John, a familiar or contemptuous appellation for a priest.”

17 Manly and Rickert, ii, 422.

18 Medieval English Nunneries (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1922), pp. 144–145.

19 Power, op. cit., Chapter xi, The Olde Daunce.

20 A Chaucer Handbook (New York: Crofts, 1927), pp. 196–197.

21 “The Duration of the Canterbury Pilgrimage”, PMLA, xxi (1906), 478–485.

22 Quoted in J. J. Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages: XIVth Century, trans. L. T. Smith, rev. ed. (London: Benn, 1920), p. 359.

23 Op. cit., p. 372.

24 Jusserand, op. cit., p. 157, quotes a complaint made by the Commons in 1348: “Whereas it is notoriously known throughout all the shires of England that robbers thieves, and other malefactors on foot and on horseback, go and ride on the highway through all the land in divers places, committing larcenies and robberies: may it please our lord the King to charge the nobility of the land that none such be maintained by them privately nor openly; but that they help to arrest and take such bad ones.” Coming nearer to the time of Chaucer's pilgrimage, about 1370, we have this interesting item from a treatise on the Fistula by John Arderne, the earliest known of great British surgeons: “(Powder) for to make a man sleep agaynz his wille, after maner of Ribaldez and trowans in fraunce, that felawshypeth tham by the waiez to pilgrimez that thai may robbe tham of thair silver when thai ar aslepe.” Then follow the ingredients, the method of preparation, and the effect on the person to whom it is given (quoted in G. G. Coulton, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation [Cambridge Univ. Press, 1919], p. 426). In this connection note also Jusserand's chapter on Outlaws and Peasants Out of Bond.

25 The only anticipation I have been able to find of my view of the real function performed by sir John and his two fellow priests is in this one sentence from Kittredge: “She [the Lady Prioress] travels in modest state, with a nun for her secretary, and three attendant priests, who suffice on occasion to guard her from unpleasant contact with the rougher elements in the company” (op. cit., p. 176).

26 Power, op. cit., p. 424. The subject is treated pp. 422–436.

27 I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to find some contemporary instance of payment to a priest for such services as the Lady Prioress may have required of sir John during the pilgrimage. I should appreciate such a reference, if any reader knows of one.