The Canterbury Tales

The Friar congratulates the Wife of Bath on her learned tale, and says he’ll tell one now, all about a wretched nasty summoner. The Host warns him to stop starting trouble and get on with his story.

This is a story the Friar claims to know firsthand from his own neighborhood; it tells of an archdeacon who loves to punish crimes (and to exact the relevant fees). He has a useful righthand man in his summoner—a creep and a pimp who keeps a retinue of spying prostitutes. (Here the Summoner and the Friar get into a shouting match, and the Host has to calm them down again.) This summoner uses his connections in the brothels to haul johns before the court and fine them, skimming money off the fees for himself.

One day, out to extort more money, the summoner runs into a bailiff who greets him as a friend, assuming he’s a fellow bailiff—a misconception with which the summoner goes along as nobody likes a summoner. The two swear friendship, vow to share all their takings, and chat about their line of work; the bailiff reveals he also makes most of his money through extortion. Then he admits to something even more startling: “I am a fiend, my dwelling is in Hell” (299). He’s taken a human shape in order to stalk the souls that are his prey. But, he explains, he draws all his power from God, and in a funny way serves God’s purposes, playing a role in the divine plan. Regardless of these alarming revelations, the summoner says he’ll stick by his vow to travel with this demon and share in his gains.

They first come across a carter stuck in the mud, who cries, “The devil take all, cart, horse, and hay in one!” (300). The summoner hints to the demon that this gives him permission to steal the carter’s possessions, but the demon says no: The carter doesn’t really mean it, so he has no power here. And indeed, as soon as the cart is unstuck, the carter blesses the same horses he just cursed. The summoner isn’t impressed, and says he’ll show the demon how to do his job.

They next come to the house of a sickly old widow woman, from whom the summoner extorts a fine. She curses him as the carter cursed his horses. Here, the demon steps in and asks her if she really means it, and she says, absolutely, if he doesn’t repent. The summoner replies that he most certainly will not repent—and his demon-friend promptly carries him off to Hell.

The Friar ends his tale with a little address to summoners, cautioning them to repent their dishonest ways or face the same fate.

Shaking with rage, the Summoner rises to tell his own story. Before he begins, he mentions he happens to have heard of a friar who visited Hell in a vision, and, seeing no friars there, asked the angel who guided him if they were all in heaven. On the contrary, the angel said, and showed him where all the friars were: in a nest in “the devil’s arse” (304). With that, the Summoner begins his story proper, which just so happens to be about a corrupt friar.

This friar travels around preaching and trying to sell trentals, expensive sequences of 30 masses sung to release dead souls from Purgatory. Between sermons, he goes house to house begging for food, falsely promising to pray for those who feed him. (Here the Friar breaks in to object, but the Host shushes him.)

One day, the friar pays a visit to a sick serf, Thomas—and to his pretty wife, who complains her husband has a terrible temper. She also mentions they’ve recently lost a little boy, and the friar assures her that he’s been granted a revelation of the child in heaven: “For I assure you both, believe me well,/Our orisons are more effectual/And we see more of Christ’s most secret things/Than common people do, or even kings” (309). The special powers of the clergy, he suggests, arise from their abstemiousness; after all, it was eating that drove Adam and Eve from Eden. He goes on and on, condemning gluttony and speaking of all the prayers he’s prayed for Thomas.

Thomas replies he sure hasn’t felt any of those prayers; he’s sought out a lot of different friars for help and he’s still sick as a dog. The friar tells him, there’s your problem: In splitting your donations between a bunch of friars, you’re showing a lack of faith. He warns Thomas against being angry with his wife by means of instructive stories from folklore and the Bible and tells him he must today seek absolution. Again, Thomas rebuts him, saying he already confessed to the curate. Finally, the friar starts blatantly begging for money.

Thomas isn’t impressed, and secretly decides to play a trick on this friar. He’ll donate something to the friar’s convent, he says, if the friar vows to share it equally between every member. The friar agrees. Thomas tells him the goods are under his butt, where he’s been storing them for safekeeping. When the friar greedily reaches down, Thomas farts in his hand.

The enraged friar storms off to the manor of the local lord, and complains about Thomas’s trick, swearing vengeance. The lord gets lost in thought, not about punishing Thomas, but about how one could be expected to evenly divide a fart between a whole convent of friars. His clever squire has an answer. Bring in all the friars, line them up around the spokes of a cartwheel and have the initial friar fart right in the hub, so the smell and sound individually reverberates down to all his brothers. But by his reckoning, a friar so holy as this one should have his first pick of any fart going.

The Host turns to the Clerk, who has been maintaining a scholarly quiet throughout the journey, and demands he tell a story—but a good one, neither a sermon nor a tale in the “high style” but a lively adventure. The Clerk agrees; he’ll tell a tale he heard from no lesser poet than Petrarch.

The story begins with a handsome young Italian marquis named Walter. Beloved by his people, he has one flaw: He refuses to marry. At last, he agrees to take a wife, on the condition that he gets to choose his bride, and everyone must swear to respect her no matter who she is.

In a village nearby lives a poor but virtuous man named Janicula and his lovely daughter Griselda. Though young, Griselda is mature, hardworking, and good. Walter decides she’ll be his bride and prepares jewels and gowns to shower her with on (what she doesn’t know will be) her wedding morning. He turns up with a surprise proposal, making only one demand: Griselda must promise to be utterly obedient to him. The stunned Griselda swears she will.

As marquess, Griselda is instantly beloved, and she and Walter have a lovely daughter. But there’s trouble in paradise. Walter determines he needs to test Griselda’s faithfulness. He reminds her she vowed to do whatever he said. Griselda replies that she and their daughter are his to command. Walter sends a servant to take the baby away in the night—presumably to be killed. Griselda, true to her word, allows the servant to take her child, asking only that she be allowed to kiss the baby goodbye, and that its body should be safely buried. The servant reports all this to Walter, who secretly sends the baby to his sister. He watches Griselda in the days that follow to see if she resents him, but she’s as loving as ever.

After four years, Griselda gives birth to a boy. Walter is delighted, until he again decides it’s time to test Griselda—though, as the Clerk laments, “needless, needless was the test, I say!” (338) Walter plays the same game he played with their first child, and Griselda again submits while her baby is ripped from her arms.

While Griselda remains as loving as ever, Walter decides to keep pushing, and counterfeits a papal bull of divorce so that he can remarry. As a final test, he’ll behave as if he’s going to marry the child no one knows is his now 12-year-old daughter.

On learning of Walter’s plan to divorce her, Griselda only blesses her husband and his future wife, and makes a small request: Since she’ll be returning all her riches to him, perhaps he can give her some clothes so she doesn’t have to go home naked? Walter almost weeps but agrees to give Griselda a smock. She humbly returns to her father’s house.

When the children arrive for the supposed wedding, Walter summons Griselda again and asks her to decorate the house. Griselda agrees, and admires the young “bride,” asking Walter be gentle with her: “I think the self-denial/Adversity might force on her would be/Harder for her to suffer than for me” (351).

At this, Walter sweeps Griselda into his arms and reveals his whole scheme has been a test—and she has resoundingly passed. Griselda embraces her children and swoons with joy. The couple happily reign from that day forward.

The Clerk concludes by cautioning that the moral of the story isn’t that every wife should behave like Griselda: That would be patently absurd. Rather, the point is that everyone should embrace their own fates as cheerfully as Griselda did, accepting what God gives them and trusting that He has a plan in mind. In fact, the Clerk adds with a nod to the Wife of Bath, wives have to be brave and assertive in the face of all the suffering that husbands visit upon them. He closes with a song encouraging wives to be fierce as tigers if they must.

The Merchant takes a rather different view of matrimony. In a short prologue to his tale, he lists the myriad failings of his own wife, then launches into his story with a deeply sarcastic paean to the joys of marriage.

His tale follows January—a knight who decides to take a wife in his old age. He first consults two friends: Placebo, who tells him he should do what seems best to him, and Justinus, who warns him that marriage only makes men miserable. January prefers Placebo’s flattery to Justinus’s brutal truths, and marries a beautiful young woman named May. He’s enamored with her and spends most of the wedding night trying to persuade his guests to leave so he can get her into bed.

It’s not long before someone else is besotted with May, too: a handsome young squire named Damian. He slips May some love poetry, and May reciprocates his affections. They’re arranging a tryst when poor January suddenly loses his sight.

Blind, but still besotted, January goes walking with May in his beautiful garden, praising her and vowing to sign over all his property to her if only she’ll be true to him. May behaves as if she’s indignant at the implication, but all the while she’s making signs to Damian over January’s head, plotting to meet him up in the branches of a pear tree.

Just as the lovers are about to carry this plan out, Pluto and Prosepina—the king and queen of the underworld—appear on the scene, and comment, unobserved. Pluto is indignant on January’s behalf, and says he has a mind to restore his sight and teach the young adulterers a lesson. Proserpina counters, irritated that women should get such a bad reputation. Regardless, Pluto decides to go through with his plan.

As May and January stroll beneath the tree where Damian hides, May asks January to boost her up into the branches so she can pluck a pear. January readily agrees, and May and Damian, wasting no time, begin having sex up in the branches. But just as they do, Pluto gives back

sight to January once more/and made him see far better than before./Never was man more taken with delight/Than January when he received his sight./And his first thought was to behold his love./He cast his eyes into the tree above/Only to see that Damian had addressed/His wife in ways that cannot be expressed/Unless I use a most discourteous word (386).

January roars with rage but May calms him by saying she’d heard she could restore his sight by “wrestling” with a man in a tree, and this is the thanks she gets? To his objections, she notes that none of us see so well right after we first wake up. January allows himself to be cajoled into disbelieving his own eyes.

The Host closes this story by exclaiming over the cruelty of wives in general and his own wife in particular.

The Host invites the young Squire to speak, encouraging him to tell a tale of love, since he’s the expert. The Squire modestly says he’s no such thing, but he’ll do his best.

He tells the tale of Cambuskan, a mighty Tartar king with many worthy children—including a beautiful daughter, Canace. One spring, Cambuskan throws a huge feast attended by the impeccably chivalrous Gawain, a knight of the Round Table. He’s brought gifts: a marvelous horse made of brass, which can run tirelessly and also turn invisible at a twist of the pin in its ear; a mirror which will show the viewer if their lover has betrayed them; and a ring which allows its wearer to understand the language of the birds and the healing properties of plants. The latter two gifts he presents specifically to the lovely Canace. The whole court marvels over these wonderful objects.

The next morning, Canace goes out for a spring walk, wearing her magical ring. Out in the woods, she sees a terrible sight: a peregrine falcon, wailing and ripping at its own body until “a crimson flood/Poured down and painted all the tree with blood” (400). Canace can see the falcon is about to faint, so she catches it as it falls, and when it revives, she uses her new power to speak to birds to ask the falcon why it’s in such agony. It must be a story of lost love, she guesses. And indeed, it is.

The falcon tells her story. She was in love, she says, with a gorgeous and courteous tercelet (a male hawk). She believed he truly loved her, too—but then he got his head turned by a kite (another bird of prey) and left her. It’s always that way, she sighs; every creature in the world loves novelty more than quality.

The Squire is about to tell how Canace, with the help of her father and brother, reunited the falcon with her tercelet. But the Franklin interrupts.

The Franklin cheerfully disrupts the Squire’s story, praising him for his eloquence and comparing him favorably to his own son, who could never tell such a good story and wastes his time. Eventually, the Host interrupts the Franklin and tells him he’d better go ahead and tell his own tale. The Franklin agrees, with the caveat that he’s a simple man and can’t tell a learned tale (a caveat he contradicts in a story that will be full of scholarly astrology and classical myth).

He tells the story of a noble knight, Arveragus, and his wife Dorigen. They’re a blissfully happy couple, in part because, unlike any couple we’ve met so far, they agree that “Lovers must each be ready to obey/The other, if they would long keep company./Love will not be constrained by mastery…” (410).

Arveragus reluctantly leaves Dorigen to go on a trip. Dorigen laments her husband’s absence and casts fearful glances at the menacing rocks of the coast, wondering why God would put such a nasty obstacle there if He loves His children.

Meanwhile, a handsome young squire named Aurelius falls in love with Dorigen. Almost dying of passion, he begs her to show him a little favor. But the faithful Dorigen swears she’ll be true to her husband. She’ll only agree to love Aurelius, she says, if he removes all the rocks from the coast—an impossible feat.

Or so she thinks. Tormented by his love, Aurelius seeks out a magician who can make the rocks seem to disappear and returns to claim his prize. Dorigen agonizes for days: She can neither break her word nor betray her husband. She thinks of all the famously virtuous women who killed themselves rather than lose their honor, and is at the point of suicide when Arveragus, who has returned safely, asks her what’s wrong. She confesses the whole story to him. He seems undisturbed, even amused, and tells her to go keep her promise to Aurelius; things may work out better than she expects.

Dorigen duly makes her way to the young squire, and humbly presents herself to him. But seeing her misery, Aurelius finds his compassion, and releases her from her promise.

He’s got a new problem now, though: He’s deeply in debt to the magician who vanished the rocks for him. He returns to the magician and tells him the whole tale, saying that he needs a few years to raise the money he owes, or he’ll have to live in poverty. The magician is moved by Aurelius’s self-sacrificing nobility and frees him from his debt.

The Franklin concludes his story by asking his fellow-travelers: Now, who would you say was the noblest person among these characters?

The Second Nun tells a hagiography—that is, the life of a saint. She begins with a warning against sloth and a hymn to the Virgin Mary, and then introduces her subject, St. Cecilia, with a disquisition on the significance of her name, which might call to mind anything from blessed lilies to the actively religious life of Leah.

Her story tells of how the saintly Cecilia converts first her husband and then his brother to Christianity. Cecilia asks that her husband join her in holy chastity and sends him to Pope Urban to be baptized. Her husband, Valerian, is dubious at first, but he rapturously converts when he’s visited by an angel bearing a holy book proclaiming the Christian faith. He returns to Cecilia, and the two share a vision in which an angel presents them with deathless crowns of flowers: lilies for Cecilia, roses for Valerian. Valerian also prays his brother Tiburce should convert; his prayer is swiftly answered when Tiburce smells the holy aroma of the flower crowns.

The three travel around working miracles and converting pagans. But the pagan authorities don’t like that and make plans to execute them. Cecilia bravely confronts the prefect, Almachius, and refuses to stand down—even after Valerian and Tiburce are executed (converting a soldier named Maximus on the way when he sees their souls ascend to heaven). At last, Almachius condemns Cecilia to death by burning in a bathhouse, but Cecilia calmly sits amid the flames. Almachius sends in an executioner to behead her, but “by no circumstance/Could he succeed in cutting through her throat,” though he strikes her three terrible blows (448). She lies bleeding and preaching for three days, converting many visitors before she dies. To this day, the Church of St. Cecilia stands on the spot where she died.

At the end of the Second Nun’s story, the pilgrims are interrupted by two men on horseback, galloping to catch up with them. These are a canon and his servant, a Yeoman. The Yeoman starts telling stories of the canon’s powers—stories that make the canon uncomfortable, and he leaves as quickly as he arrived. Now he’s gone, the Yeoman says, I’ll tell you the real stories about him.

The canon, it transpires, was an alchemist, who beggared himself and his servant in his efforts to find the Philosopher’s Stone that transmutes base metal into gold. The Yeoman makes an exhaustive list of the supplies one needs to practice alchemy, but concludes, “the Philosopher’s Stone,/Called the Elixir, never can be known./We seek and seek, and were it once discovered/We should be safe enough—expenses covered./But there’s no way…” (458).

To further illustrate his point, he tells the story of a devilish canon—certainly not his own master—who convinces a priest he’s discovered the Philosopher’s Stone. The credulous, greedy priest is eager to see the Stone at work, so the canon contrives a scheme. He gets the priest to throw all sorts of trash into a pot, then secretly introduces tiny lumps of silver. The priest is amazed and begs the canon for the recipe; the canon balks, but at last charges him the friendly price of 40 pounds and disappears, leaving the fleeced priest to discover his mistake.

The Yeoman closes with a little speech about how, while it’s easy to transmute wealth into poverty, converting lead into gold is a secret God seems to want to keep to Himself, so it’s best for humans not to set themselves against Him.

One morning, the Manciple observes that the Cook seems to have such a bad hangover he’s still drunk, and taunts him—until the Host notes that the Cook might have a thing or two to say about the Manciple when he sobers. The Manciple retracts his words and offers the Cook a hair of the dog, and the Host happily reflects that wine has the magic power to change insult into jokes. He then demands a story from the Manciple, since the Cook is in no position to provide one.

The Manciple’s story tells of the travails of Phoebus—also known as the god Apollo—when he lived on earth. Phoebus is the handsomest and most talented of men—a musician and a hunter—and he lives happily with his wife and their pet, a white crow. But all is not well: In spite of being married to a god, Phoebus’s wife takes a lover, a lowly and lesser fellow who she wants purely for variety’s sake.

When Phoebus comes home one day, the white crow drops him a hint: “a man whose reputation/Compared with yours has little estimation,/Not worth a gnat indeed; upon my life,/On your own bed I saw him plumb your wife” (482). Infuriated, Phoebus kills his wife.

Shortly thereafter, he’s overcome by remorse, turns in rage on the crow, and curses him: From now on, he says, your feathers will be black, your song will be a horrible croak, and you will be an emblem of doom.

The moral of this story, the Manciple says, is to listen to what his wise old mother said: Never be the bearer of bad news, for no one will thank you for it.

It’s getting late in the afternoon when the Host turns to the Parson and asks for him to close out the journey: He’s the only one who hasn’t told a story. The Parson replies, “You’ll get no fable or romance from me,/For Paul in his Epistle to Timothy/Reproves all those who wave aside the truth/For fables that are wretched and uncouth” (486). Why tell a made-up story, he goes on, when he can deliver the truths of the Gospel? He’ll close out the journey with preaching instead—and he’ll preach in prose, not verse, for “I can’t romance with rum-ram-ruf by letter” (486). The company enthusiastically agrees that this will be just the ticket.

(Here, the translator provides a summary rather than a translation of the Parson’s tale. It’s a sermon about the seven deadly sins: how to identify them, how to properly confess them, and how to know the virtues that are their opposites. The big takeaway from the sermon is that God is merciful and eager to forgive—and proper contrition is thus the “root of the tree of Penitence” that grows to a fruit, whose seeds are grace; and “the heat in that seed [is] the Love of God” (487).

Perhaps chastened after the Parson’s sermon, Chaucer closes his poem by asking his readers to forgive him if he’s failed in any way in these pages—and to “pray for me, that Christ have mercy on me and forgive me my sins: and especially for my translations and enditings [sic] of worldly vanities, which I revoke in my retractions” (489). He makes an illustrative list of all the lecherous books and poems he’s written, these Tales included.

He’ll stand by his holy books of homilies and hagiographies, though. He makes a prayer to be saved at the Day of Judgment and concludes: “Here ends the book of the Tales of Canterbury compiled by Geoffrey Chaucer, on whose soul Jesu Christ have mercy. Amen” (489).