The Canterbury Tales

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1400

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue–“Chaucer’s Tales”

“The Monk’s Tale”–“The Pardoner’s Tale”

“The Wife of Bath’s Tale”–“Chaucer’s Retractions”

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Hypocrisy

The pilgrims of The Canterbury Tales love to accuse each other—and, if they’re the Pardoner, themselves—of rank hypocrisy. Their behavior gives some credence to those accusations, and the religious figures in particular often fall a little short of their ideals. Monks supposedly living in holy poverty look awfully well-fed, celibates have an eye for the ladies, and softhearted nuns relish the grim details of exactly how deep a martyr’s throat was slit and how nasty the cesspit he was thrown into was. The different textures of the stories throw the contradiction between the ideal and the real into sharp relief. Stories of impossible virtue (like the Man of Law’s tale of the pious Constance) interweave with grotesque stories of flatulence-filled vengeance (like the Miller’s or the Summoner’s).

Perhaps there’s a midpoint to be found in stories like the Wife of Bath’s autobiographical prologue, or (strangely) in the Knight’s romance of squabbling-but-chivalrous friends. In different ways, both storytellers humanely deal with the mess of life: the Wife of Bath in her belief that “not every dish and vessel’s made of gold,/Some are of wood, yet earn their master’s praise,/God calls His folk to Him in many ways” (261), and the Knight in his tale’s progression from selfishness to love (and his sense that even the gods pull each other’s hair sometimes). Perhaps, these stories suggest, the work of human life is not to avoid hypocrisy by becoming perfect, nor to counter accusations of hypocrisy with more accusations of hypocrisy, but to acknowledge one’s failures—and in so doing, to become honest.

Sex, Love, and Marriage

Differing ideas and ideals of marriage and love form one of the most complex ongoing conversations in The Canterbury Tales. While a number of earlier stories nod to this theme with tales of courtly love, virtuous wifehood, and rampant adultery, things really kick off with the Wife of Bath, whose argument that everyone leads a happier life when men let their wives steer the ship triggers a lengthy discussion. Both the Clerk and the Merchant directly respond to the Wife of Bath’s story. The Clerk tells a tale of impossible wifely patience and then undercuts it, making clear that stories about uxorious perfection are, and should be, allegories—and adding that he speaks “from affection for the Wife of Bath,” whose sufferings and successes speak to the importance of women’s power (354). The Merchant, scoffing, replies that marriage is a torment to men, and women are untrustworthy and sexually insatiable (a common medieval belief that may come as a surprise to readers grounded in modern-day stereotypes of lustful, cheating men). The Franklin gets the last word with his sweet story of a loving couple, which asks, can’t we all just get along and agree to obey each other?

This welter of perspectives speaks to the book’s larger interest in how society proper hangs together. In Chaucer’s world—as in the contemporary one—sex occupies a lot of people’s mental energy, perhaps because of the ways it’s connected to power and selfhood. The stories’ arguments over marriage and the battle of the sexes reflect not just antiquated ideas about how one should arrange one’s life, but still-relevant human questions about identities, and responsibilities to other people.

Storytelling

After a course of energetic and wildly variable stories, the reader may be a little surprised to find that The Canterbury Tales closes with a character who says, “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). They might also be surprised to hear all the pilgrims who’ve just told stories readily agree with this assessment and settle in for a nice long sermon—and even more surprised by Chaucer’s closing “Retraction,” during which he forswears all his wicked writings, like the book that is ending. The Parson’s judgment on storytelling as untruthful might first seem to badly reflect on the whole enterprise of the Tales, and on their tellers. But as ever with Chaucer, there’s a touch of tongue-in-cheek wit here.

The Parson’s final sermon is a detailed catalogue of the deadly sins, and the virtues that counteract each. But so, the reader might reflect, is the entirety of The Canterbury Tales. The stories’ mixture of high and low, virtue and vice, and falsehood and truth is a reflection of the world as it really is. Chaucer’s choice to include himself as a character among characters (and even as one who, when he tries to tell a goofy story, gets shouted down by one of his own creations) brings this point home: The world is made of people, and people are not creatures of fact, but fiction. Everyone is made of the stories about themselves and each other. The “Parson’s Tale,” as both a repudiation and a mirror of storytelling, is just another facet in the crystal of human experience as Chaucer sees it.