History and Form in the to Author(s): Loy D. Martin Source: ELH, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Spring, 1978), pp. 1-17 Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872448 Accessed: 07-01-2016 23:29 UTC

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HISTORY AND FORM IN THE GENERAL PROLOGUE TO THE CANTERBURY TALES

BY LOY D. MARTIN

Is theform of the General Prologue to theCanterbury Tales new orold? Criticalsentiment seems on thewhole to favornewness; yet there has always remained a sense of craftsmanshipand conventionalityabout the poem which continually reinvigorates the searchfor a strongantecedent genre. In recentyears, a fewattempts have been persuasive, notablyJ. V. Cunningham'sstructural analysisof the Prologue as a dreamvision.1 Cunningham begins with theassumption that there must be an availablegeneric "tradition" whichfunctions intact to shape a poet'sexperience into poetry, but even his mostconvinced reader must wonder why Chaucer's use of thattradition escaped notice until the twentieth century. I think this suggeststhat Cunningham's ideal notionsof traditionand genre cause himto overstatehis case, butI also thinkthere are verygood reasons why he perceived such a strongaffinity between the Prologueand the formof the dreamvision. In orderto save his valuable intuition,then, while offeringan alternativeset of assumptionsabout genre formation, I should like to turn briefly to an idea offeredby AlastairFowler in an essay called "The Life and Death ofLiterary Forms."2 Fowlernotices that genres, after complex developments in time, oftendo notsimply disappear. Rather they break up intowhat he calls "modes,"methods of writing, like satiriclanguage, which are stillrecognizable but whichcan no longeraccount for the formal propertiesof entire works.This is a very simple and useful observation;it is undoubtedlytrue. The questionthat Fowler does notaddress is whethergenres can appearas well as disappearin this

Loy D. Martin 1

ELH 45 (1978) 1-17 0013-8304/78/0451-0001$01.00 Copyright? 1978 by The JohnsHopkins University Press All rightsof reproductionin any formreserved.

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions way, whether new genres can sometimes be recognized as expansions of previous "modes" as modes can be recognized as diminutions of previous genres. This seems to me likely and provides a frameworkin which to identifyan historicalrelationship between the formof the General Prologue and a rhetoricaldevice which appears in, but does not generically constitute,the poems. The particularstylistic fragment I have in mind is the rhetorical catalogue of types, which appears frequentlyin Chaucer's earlier dream vision poems. It not only appears there,it develops, and my very simple argumenthere will be that it develops finallyinto the main organizingprinciple of the General Prologue. I would begin, therefore,by submittinga catalogue fromthe Parlement of Foules, one which seems merelyto list the species oftrees thatthe dreamer sees: The byldereok, and ek thehardy asshe; The pilerelm, the cofreunto carayne; The boxtrepipere, holm to whippeslashe; The saylyngefyr; the cipresse,deth to playne; The shetereew; the asp forshaftes pleyne; The olyveof pes, and eke the dronkevyne; The victorpalm, the laurerto devyne.3 Cataloguing, as Cunninghamimplies, is centralto the dream vision, and even in a simple case like this one, analysis will show us why. Each tree is named by a practical use or a practical problem it presents in the familiarworld; theyappear in a dream, and, what is most important,they appear in a garden which is immediately represented as timeless. Birds sing the eternal harmonyof angelic music, there are no fluctuationsof hot and cold, men may not "waxe sek ne old," and day never changes into night. Change, in other words, is explicitlyexcluded as a normal condition of existence in thisgarden. Therefore, the temporalfunctions of the treesare, forthe most part, inapplicable. They will not be cut down fortheir uses because those uses have meaning onlyin a world in which time rules with implicationsthat are irrelevanthere. In the garden,there is no need forshelter and no need to build, no need forcoffins because thereis no "carayne," no need forpipes because the perfectmusic of heaven emanates fromnature; birdsong and the wind in the living arboreal "instruments."There is no need to sail, no reason to cut and plane boards,and "the shetere ew; the asp forshaftes pleyne" are not useful because there is no war or strife.Thus, there is no need to

2 General Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales"

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions make peace or celebrate victory,and there is no need to "devyne" the future,because time does not imply change. What seems a simple list ofobserved trees,then, on second glance, displays a most peculiar structureof irrelevance. Why is this so? I would argue that,through the dreamvision, Chaucher is tryingto project a realm of experience or knowledge which transcendssome of the obvious limitations of life in time without aspiring to the perfect timelessness of eternity.The trees ornament a timeless realm, and yet their differentiationinto species and mundane uses links them irrevocablyto the sublunaryworld. We cannot dismiss the contradiction;we can only say thatChaucer has conceived ofhis garden as something ambiguously medium aeternitatem et tempus.4 The point of positing such a realm emerges as the poem unfolds and the garden's initial timelessness is revised. The birds abandon their heavenly music for the unregulated "noyse" of debate. Change, strife,and, by implication, death are introduced intowhat at firstappeared to be an eternalparadise. Then, just when the garden world seems indistinguishablefrom the self-consuming world of men, Nature imposes a solution to the debate and thus effectsa partialrecovery. The recoveryis partialbecause it restores only that intermediate realm which the catalogue of the trees suggested; it does not restorean ideal paradise. The birds can sing again, but theirrecovery is not complete: theydo not sing the music of the heavenly harmonybut a song that"imaked was in Fraunce." The birds' rondeau compromises between the chaos of ear- shatteringdiscord and the music of the spheres. And as the mating ritual resumes its pattern of recurrence "from yer to yeere" in Nature's garden, the concept of cyclic or repetitionaltime resolves the antithesisbetween linear time and timelessness, between fatal displacement and perfect stasis. This is, in part, why "commun profit"is invoked in the preservationof the ceremonythat enables procreation. Individual birds will die, but the species, through regeneration,will be deathless.5 The Parlement is a poem thatcelebrates the resolution of severe polarities,and the rhetoricalcatalogue is but one technique among many for imagining a mode of knowledge or experience which transcends the strictAugustinian dualism of time and eternity. Moreover, the need for such a projection is central throughout Chaucer's earlypoems. His ongoing meditationon cyclic repetition testifiesto that need, and so does his postulation of extraordinary human experiences which remove the individual brieflyfrom time

Loy D. Martin 3

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and allow for a special learning experience. In its most graphic manifestations,this removal involves defininga special place which is neither heaven nor earth. Affrycantakes Scipio to such a place; looking one way, Scipio sees Carthage whole as he could not while earth-bound;looking the otherway, he is shown the "Galaxye" and the nine spheres. And he hears "the melodye ... That cometh of thilkesperes thryesthre." The eagle in the Hous of Fame plucks the dreamerto a place which is half way between heaven and earth (11. 713-15) and introduceshim to a goddess whose feetrest on earthand whose head is in heaven (11. 1372-76). Furthermore, these transportationsnormally occur in dreams,suggesting that the dream vision itselfis to be interpretedas a partialtranscendence of time. As early as , sleep and dreaming functionas mediatorsbetween life and death, and thisnotion of an intermediate realm is carried over, without the actual dream, in Troilus' perplexing pause at the eighth sphere as he leaves this life. In the Parlement,the dream vision validates the idea of a garden which seems timeless in some details yet earth-boundin others. I wish to propose that the Canterburypilgrimage displays a similar ambiguityand thatChaucer, in the General Prologue, abandons the dream and expands the catalogue technique to signifya profoundif brief and partial departure fromordinary life. This view will help explain the Prologue's affinitywith the dream visions without identifyingit withthem generically. Thus, in orderto see whyI wish to assertthe Prologue's lineal descent fromthe simplercatalogue, let us turnto the Canterburypilgrimage in detail. The Prologue begins, as we all know,by describingthe pilgrimage as a typical event recurringeach year in spring,the time of natural and spiritual regeneration6-much as the fowls' ritual of mate-choosing recurs annually on St. Valentine's Day in the Parlement. People who go on pilgrimagesseek "straungestrondes;" they travel to shrines faraway fromhome "in sondrylondes." The concept, in other words, which orders Chaucer's account of the custom of the time is that of persons leaving their homes, the locations of theirdaily lives, to meet in a place which is "straunge," somehow apart fromtheir accustomed environments. The poet reportsthat "in that seson on a day" he joined such a group ofpilgrims at the Tabard, and he proceeds to describe themin his famous series of portraits.Immediately, in the portraitof the Knight,we can begin to see why we must understandthis series in termsof a contrastbetween pilgrimageand daily life. We firstlearn

4 General Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales"

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions of the Knight'spersonal history.He is a greatand honorable soldier and a gracious courtier,and he has foughtfor his lord in many great battles. Those conflicts, moreover, are specifically named; his fifteenmortal battles Chaucer dwells upon at length.Before relating a single detail ofhis appearance on the occasion ofthe pilgrimage,the narratorinsistently engages our attentionwith a life of danger and strife,toil and death. And when descriptionfinally follows, it relates that life to the present occasion: But,for to tellenyow of his array, His horswere good,but he was natgay. Of fustianhe wereda gypon Al bismoteredwith his habergeon, For he was late ycomefrom his viage, And wentefor to doon his pilgrymage. (1, 73-78) We have been apprised of thatactive, worldlylife in order thatwe mightknow the natureof what the Knighthas leftbehind in joining the travelers.His garmentsshow the wear and debris ofbattle, but he has moved away fromhis accustomed occupation to share another kind of experience with men and women of the widest possible varietyof vocations, social ranksand conditions.7The relationof the person to his complex ofphysical attributesin the Knight'sportrait is identical to the relationof noun to modifyingphrase or adjective for each tree in the catalogue I discussed earlier. The person (noun) is located in an unaccustomed place (semantic context),and his (its) attributes(modifiers) denote a normalfunction which is irrelevantto thatplace or context.The differenceis that,in the General Prologue, this rudimentarygrammar has been expanded and enriched to become a principle of narrativestructure. I would suggest that the entire series of portraitsrepresents an astonishingrealization of the potential of the Chaucerian catalogue as we findit incidentallyin the earlierpoems. Chaucer introducesall ofthe pilgrims,as he does the Knight,by relatingthe natureof their lives and professions.As in the catalogue of birds in the Parlement, most are given moral as well as physical attributes,and several, like the Squire, the Merchant,the Clerk, the Shipman,the Wife of Bath, the Reeve and the Pardoner,are associated withspecific locations in keeping withthe initialassertion that persons fromall over England come together for pilgrimages. Furthermore, the detail which Chaucer devotes to his accounts of the normal life of each pilgrim serves, by implication,to emphasize the departurefrom those lives

Loy D. Martin 5

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions representedby the pilgrimage itself.For a fairnumber of pilgrims, this sense ofseparation between whatthey usually do and what they are doing now remainsimplicit; such is the case withthe Squire, the Friar, the Man of Law, the Merchant, the Franklin, and several others.For anothergroup, however, more explicittechniques, some of which we have already encountered in the portraitof the Knight, re-enforceour understanding.Like the Knight,a numberof pilgrims carry,as partof their "array," implements or otherphysical attributes which easily identifytheir worldly occupations but which have no relevance to the contextof pilgrimage. Consider, forexample, the Yeoman: And he was clad in cote and hood ofgrene. A sheefof pecok arwes,bright and kene, Underhis belt he bar fullthriftily, (Wel koude he dressehis takelyemanly: His armesdrouped noght with fetheres lowe) And in his handhe baar a myghtybowe. A notheed hadde he, witha brounvisage. (I, 103-09) As the Knightbears on his clothes the evidence ofrecent battles, the Yeoman, with his "broun visage," leaves no doubt thathe has lately come fromthe exercise of his worldly vocation, one in which the woodsman's skin is darkened by the sun. And he bringsthe tools of his trade with him, the bow and "yemanly" dressed arrows which see daily use but which clearly have nothingto do withthe activity their owner is about to engage in. The same attributeof a deeply tannedface appears in the portraitof the shipman,despite the factthat the "hoote somer" could hardlyhave "maad his hewe al broun" in April. And that pilgrim is chiefly distinguished by his skill in navigation,a talent which, however indispensable in the world of tempestsand treacherouspassages, can be ofno moreuse on the road to Canterburythan masts and sails in a timeless garden. Like the Yeoman, moreover,the Haberdasher, Carpenter,Weaver, Dyer, and Tapestry Maker carry with them, to no apparent purpose, the appointed "geere" of theirprofessions. In fact,most of the pilgrims are dressed not explicitlyfor travel but accordingto theirrespective callings. The Monk will serve to introduceus to anothertype of pilgrim, one who must be understood as he relates to the tale he tells. Not all of the tellers have specific relationshipsto theirtales, but when such relationships do exist, they oftensupport the interpretationof the

6 GeneralPrologue to the "CanterburyTales"

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions pilgrimageand the game oftales which I am offeringhere. The Monk provides a simple example of the kind of pilgrim xvho markedly departsfrom what we know ofhis life's habits throughthe natureof the tale that he tells. In the General Prologue, he is presented satirically;he cares for nothingbut temporal pleasures: hunting, eating, drinking,easy living-all the comfortswhich place a man at the mercyof Fortune. And yet,when he comes to his pilgrimage,he responds to the exhortationto "brek not oure game" by relatinga series of de casibus tragedies: Tragedieis to seyna certeynstorie As olde bookesmaken us memorie, Of hymthat stood in greetprosperitee, Andis yfallenout ofheigh degree Intomyserie, and endethwrecehedly. (VII, 1973-77) He takes his subject matterfrom that realm of books and perpetual memorywhich, in Chaucer's scheme of thinking,is so importantly distinguishedfrom temporal existence. And accordingly,the Monk's Tale stands in opposition to the spiritof his temporallife, a life in which'thetruth of tragedy is disregardedin riotand dissipationand in which books play no part: Whatsholde he studieand makehymselven wood, Upon a bookin cloystrealwey to poure, Or swynkenwith his handes,and laboure, As Austynbit? How shal the worldbe served? (1, 184-87) The world, in the Monk's Tale, is not served, forthe conventional moral of tragedyin the Middle Ages is thatmen should turntheir attentionaway fromthe world. The Monk is not a permanently changed man; we may expect him to returnto "al his lust." Yet, for this occasion of pilgrimage and game, he has set aside his normal habits to thinkand "endite" on a differentplane. The Monk is not alone in lending this kind ofstructural principle to the Canterbury Tales. The Parson, though he occupies the opposite end ofthe moralspectrum, nevertheless functions similarly in Chaucer's fiction.His portraitis undoubtedly among the most complimentaryin the Prologue, not least because of the active nature of his charity. While the Monk mocks toil, the Parson vigorouslyserves his parish daily,and partof his- motive for doing so stems fromhis belief thatmen learn fromgood examples:

Lay D. Martin 7

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions This noble ensampleto his sheep he yaf, Thatfirst he wroghte,and afterwardtaughte. (I, 496-97) To drawenfolk to heveneby fairness, By good ensample,this was his bisynesse. (I, 519-20) How is it possible forChaucer to portraythis model priest in such a way that he can significantlydepart fromhis normal occupation without demeaning himself? The firstanswer is that the present pilgrimage offersa legitimate exception to one of the Parson's firmestrules: He settenat his beneficeto hyre And leet his sheep encombredin the myre Andran to Londoununto Seinte Poules To sekenhym a chaunteriefor soules, Or witha bretherhedto been withholder But dwelteat hoom,and keptewel his folde, So thatthe wolf ne made it nat myscarie... (I, 507-13) Normally,the Parson remains in his parish as its spiritualprotector, retiringneither for his own gain nor forseclusion. Yet he makes no apologies for leaving his sheep untended forthe occasion of the Canterbury pilgrimage. Moreover, we can hardly doubt his intentionswhen we observe the importanceof his sermonin ending the game oftales. Even there,however, departuresfrom his normal procedure may be found. The Parson's portraitin the General Prologue stresses the factthat he acts firstand preaches later,and thathe teaches most effectivelyby example. But when the host asks him to tell his "greet metere" in the formof a fable, to tell an exemplary tale among the other stories, the Parson refuses and, instead, preaches a sermon. Appropriately,his decision seems to move the pilgrimageonto a higherlevel, and it does so because his contextis essentially differentfrom what it is in the parish. Here, he can pointthe way directlyto "thilkeparfit glorious pilgrymage / That highteJerusalem celestial" precisely because he is participatingin a pilgrimage in the firstplace. At home, his ambitions must be much humbler. In the ordinaryworld of travail and temptation,a priest does well to set a properexample forright action in mundane affairs; the way to salvationproceeds step by step throughtime. At the end of the Canterburygame, however, the pilgrimscan "gladly heere" the Parson's comprehensive programfor human salvation in its abstract

8 GeneralPrologue to the "CanterburyTales"

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions entirety.The sermon has not lost its referenceto life in this world, and the Parson remainsrecognizably himself; yet the perspective of his listenershas changed. They have been seeing the world,through fictions, from a distance, and their vision has acquired an un- accustomed scope. Thus, the Parson, like the other pilgrims, retains attributeswhich link him to his temporal life, but because some of those attributes do not apply in pilgrimage, he too demonstrateswhat kind of departure we and these pilgrims have made. The question ofperspective should affectour understandingof the Pardoner as well. His portraitrecords a life of extorting"offerings" and generally capitalizing on the needs and gullibilities of poor people. For success in this kind of deception, moreover,he needs one talent in particular: Wel koude he rede a lessounor a storie. But alderbesthe songan offertorie; For wel he wiste,when that song was songe, He mostepreche and wel affilehis tonge To wynnesilver, as he fulwel koude . . . (I, 709-13) He mustsing well and speak well, and the addresses which win him silver take the formof eithera homiletic "lessoun" or a moral story. Thus, the Pardoner's Tale itselfoffers a superb example ofits teller's geere," the tool of his trade. His prologue, on the otherhand, is a differentmatter. Before telling his tale, the Pardoner publicly denounces himselffor his sin of avarice withthe result thatthe tale itself,also an expositionof avarice,serves reflectivelyto condem the man who tells it. Now this procedure hardlyrepresents the kind of rhetoricalskills required by the Pardoner'svocation, and when, with his moral tale finished,he asks formoney even fromthe host,Harry Bailly's response is a violentverbal attack.This ending oftenpuzzles readers, but it can be understood in termsof a shiftof perspective between the usual situationin which the Pardoner's tales are told and this occasion of pilgrimage.The Pardonertells a brilliantmoral tale, just as he customarily does to prepare listeners for his solicitations.This time,however, he has defeated any attemptto gull his companions by exposing his avarice before the tale is told. The spirit of penance and the resultingconfessional candor which the pilgrimage engenders alter the perspective of the Pardoner's audience and thereby deprive his skill of its usual function.The Pardonerand mostof the pilgrimsseem to understandthis perfectly

Loy D. Martin 9

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions well; HarryBailly, on the otherhand, does not. Swearing oaths like the rioters in the tale, he attacks the Pardoner ad hominem, mistakenly replacing game with an "earnest" reading of the invitationto worship the Pardoner's relics fora price. The same disjunction between pilgrimage and ordinary life receives stress from several other sources, though in less complicated ways. The Wife of Bath comes to join the company,for example, at a time when she is not a wife. The Canon's Yeoman can defy and expose his master as he could never do under ordinary circumstances. And the clerk, man of few words and teacher of moralvirtue, tells a tale whose moralissues are ultimatelydifficult to resolve and whose heroine is explicitlynot recommended as a model forliving wives. One of the most subtle exploitationsof a pilgrim's movement out of his temporal life and values occurs in Chaucer's treatmentof the Merchant.A shrewd bargainer,this "worthyman" does not hesitate to declare his mercenarysystem of values withthe greatestconviction: His resonshe spak fulsolempnely, Sownyngealwey th'encrees of his wynnyng. (I. 274-75) But again we must look at the tale he tells. Paul A. Olson has shown thatJanuary, from the beginning,thinks of May in mercenaryterms; she is treatedas an object to be boughtand possessed, withthe result that January gives in to the jealousy which precipitates his cuckolding.8Thus, in a tale which deals, like manyothers, with love and marriage,the Merchant's proudly espoused commercialvalues are shown-and by the Merchant himself-to be inappropriateto marriage,a kind of human "exchange"' which clearly concerns him in a serious personal way. Chaucer did not "invent" the formof the CanterburyTales (or the Prologue) ex nihilo. He had previously adapted an ancient convention,the rhetoricalcatalogue, to serve a new purpose in his early poems, the purpose of defining an extraordinarymode of human experience or knowledge. The alterationof functionleft the device of the catalogue with an immense new potential,one which Chaucer went on to explore by expanding it into the central organizingprinciple forhis mostambitious poem. This, however, is only half an explanation. It locates a formalsource and a continuity between the dream visions and the CanterburyTales. But the latter is not a dream vision. Lacking a dream and a supernaturalapparatus,

10 General Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales">

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions it introducesa companyof contemporarytravelers and, most important,a competition as partof its fundamentalstructure. In askingwhy Chaucer chose the catalogue as an inchoatepattern on whichto build,we mustalso ask whyhe builtas he did,why the concernsof the earlier poems developed in this direction instead of someother. And here, since antecedents cannot entail their own transformations,we need to examinethe relationshipbetween literarychange and a non-literarysocial reality. As I have said,the binary opposition between life in timeand a timeless eternitybecomes, in Chaucer's poetry,a triad.A third principlederives its elements from both of the prior categories in orderto providea tenuousand fleetingrespite from temporal limitationswithout projecting the ultimate displacement of death itself.In theearly poems the vehicles of transcendence are visionary andmythic, but, in the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer invents a human social institutionwith much the same implications.I thinkthis literaryevolution reflects a heightenedanxiety about selective aspectsof ordinary life in time, and we needto specify this anxiety in orderto understandthe literary change. The Canterburypilgrims come from various points of originto sharein cyclic,ritualized time through pilgrimage. Furthermore, theyrepresent not only regions but a varietyof different classes or socialtypes.9 The interactionof these types provides the central dramaticprinciple of the journey, and, if I amcorrect, italso locates Chaucer'ssource of anxiety. In short,the relativeaccessibility of differentsocial groups to one anotherwas changingin fourteenth centuryEngland, and the Canterburypilgrimage posits an access whichwas, as yet,outside the realmof ordinaryexperience but whichreflected some of the currents of contemporary change. Social historianshave shownthat, during the fourteenthand fifteenthcenturies, a system of social organization according to rank and fixedprivilege gradually yielded to one based morenearly on our modernnotion of class.'0 In economic terms,this shift correspondsto variousphases of the transition from the medieval feudaleconomy to a mercantile,proto-capitalist economy. Sylvia Thrupp,among others, has described both the growing centrality of competitionin there-structured economy of the fourteenth century and the breakdownof regionaleconomic insularity. As small communitiesincreasingly took part in interregionaltrade, the influenceof merchants in governmentgrew, with consequences that affectedthe entire culture:

LoyD. Martin 11

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Where this conditionpersisted for any lengthof time,social distinctionhardened into the lines of a definiteclass structure, and politicaland economiccrises were likelyto generateclass conflict."l

Social restructuringalong class lines determined by wealth and economic functionwas not,of course, limitedto provincialcenters of craft and small trade. Persons of knightly rank, dependent on incomes fromtheir lands or the meager proceeds ofsoldiering, often foundthemselves in the mostserious kind ofpoverty, while wealthy merchants,lawyers, physicians, clerks and tradespeople, especially in London, were promotedto knightlyrank, adopted heraldic arms or marriedtheir daughtersinto noble families. And the nobilityin turnincreasingly took up trade as a means of sustainingits statusin factas well as in name.12These developments, which can only be glanced at here, broughtwith them new social freedoms and new dangers. There is, forexample, substantialevidence to suggest that the late fourteenthand early fifteenthcenturies allowed for new possibilities of intimacyand interpersonalexchange among persons of differentprofessions or trades and among persons of different ranks.'3 This is the constructive side. The destructive side is economic and class conflict. Changes in social structure,of course, take time, and while they are in progress, they can be simultaneously frightening and fascinating to those who are involuntarily subject to their implications. Moreover, in periods of relatively rapid change, conservativecustoms and taboos tend to retaintheir strongest hold on individual behavior in the most familiar(and usually least urban) circumstances. I think, therefore, that we must see Chaucer's insistence on displacement from home, the introduction of pilgrimageas a special (thoughpredictable) event, and the breadth of social representationamong the pilgrimsas formallyrelated in a conceptual structurewhich reflectsconcrete social ambiguities and tensions.14 The pilgrimage is an occasion on which a kind of experimentationin social interactionis possible which is perhaps still less comfortable among peasants, craftsmen,monks, friars, pardoners,seamen, land holding widows, franklinsand nobles when all are part of the same small community.And this returnsus to the question of anxiety. If one consistentissue emerges fromChaucer's poetry,it is thatof competition. Most obvious in the Parlement of Foules, , and the Canterbury Tales, it is never-

12 General Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales"

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions theless latent in the courtly love language of the Book of the Duchess, the dispensation of reputationsin the Hous of Fame, and the implicitlycomparative presentations of virtuein the Legend of Good Women.And in the strongerpoems, the social groundingof the competitive anxiety emerges unambiguously: confusion about social rank or classes in the Parlement, the intrusionof war into interpersonalrelations in the Troilus,and the alienatingfunctions of economic relations in the Canterbury Tales. Conflict,class and money relate within the poems in varying proportionsbut will furnish,in nearly everycase, the conditionsof anxietyout of which Chaucer generates his alternativefictive spaces. Thus, in a large numberof cases, the details with which Chaucer chooses to locate his pilgrimsin the actual world involve the ways they use or otherwise relate to money or wealth.'5 The Monk is equivocal as a Monk not only because he loves the pleasure of huntingbut because he possesses the fine horses,hounds, and gear to hunt in the grandest style. Of the Friar we know primarilyhis means of acquiring more income than he should. The Merchant is rich,the Clerk is poor,and both the Man ofLaw and the Franklinare distinguishedchiefly by theirabilities to expand theirownership of land, a function which, under a stricterfeudal order would be confinedto barons or othernobles. As money gains prestige,so do those whose livingcomes by wage or sale, and the guildsmen on the road to Canterburyare well aware thatpossessions are beginningto give them an unaccustomed status: For catelhadde theyynogh and rente, And eek hirwyves wolde it wel assente; And elles certeynwere they to blame. It is ful fairto been ycleped"madame,' And goonto vigiliesal bifore, Andhave a mantelroialiche ybore. (I, 373-78) The Shipman is a pettythief, the Doctor of Physic loves gold above all else, and the figuresof the Miller, Manciple, Reeve, Summoner and Pardoner are all, to some degree, particularized and gently satirizedaccording to theirvariously opportunistic participations in the economic order.Nevertheless, the designationof "good felawe" continus to recur,either in explicit termsor implicitlythrough the narrator's comradely affection. As companions in pilgrimage fellowship, Chaucer the pilgrim accepts them all, responding without reserve to those who exploit opportunitiesfor economic

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This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions advancement with the fewest scruples. Must we then conclude that our narratorlacks discriminationor is naive? To me, this question does not seem quite to the point. What I have been describing is a formaland ideational structuredesigned to separate pilgrimagefrom ordinarylife on the groundsthat economic ormercantile motives and practices lack theirusual consequences in the contextof fellowship as a ceremony of spring.In otherwords, Chaucer has invented for- mal devices, an expanded catalogue and a contest,which embrace social change at one level-the interactionamong members of sep- arate classes-while resisting the more ominous implications of that change at another level-the mutual human destructiveness inherentin economic competition. This is notjust a pilgrimage;it is a "game" played on a pilgrimage. And it is this factwhich so compellinglydiverts attention away from the ultimate".enjoyment" of the pilgrims'destination and towardthe enjoymentof the journey forits own sake. St. Augustine would not have accepted the value of such diversion, but St. Augustine did not live in fourteenth-centuryEngland. Harry Bailly does. He has seen manypilgrims in his day,and he knows theirneeds well; he knows thatthose needs cannotbe wholly fulfilledby worship at the shrine of a martyr: Ye goonto Caunterbury-Godyow speede, The blisfilmartir quite yowyoure meed! And wel I woot, as ye goon by the weye, He shapen yow to talen and to pleye; For trewely,confort ne myrtheis noon To ride by the weye doumb as a stoon; And therforewol I maken yow disport, As I seyde erst,and doon yow som confort. And if yow likethalle by oon assent For to stonden at myjuggement, And forto werken as I shal yow seye, To-morwe,whan ye riden by the weye, Now, by my fadersoule thatis deed But ye be myrie,I wol yeve yow mynheed! (I, 769-82)

The host representsthis need for"disport" or "pleye" as being no less fundamental than that of pilgrimage itself. And in order to confirmits particularfunction in the social context,we need only look to the specific formulationof the game. The pilgrims will tell tales in a competition with a material commodityas prize, a dinnerbought by the "losers." But, forthose

14 General Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales"

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions who pay, the loss is negligible; one dinner will be divided among twenty-ninepurses. Indeed, there is only one way a pilgrim can incurfinancial hardship on thispilgrimage: to violate the rules ofthe game by depriving the host of his finaljudgment. In this case the offendingpilgrim will pay "1al that we spenden by the weye." Pilgrimage is, therefore,not merely an occasion of "escape" from ordinary life. It can incorporate the materially motivated competition on which the transformationof medieval society is based, but, at the level of consequences, it reduces thatcompetition to a trivialized form.The members of differentsocial groups can relate to one anotherin progressiveways derived fromthe flexible medium ofmonetary exchange; but none ofthem will be temptedto enjoy theirnew freedomby inflictinginjury on othersas theytoo oftendo in theiractual lives.16Nor will povertyor Christiancharity be a handicap in Harry Bailly's game. We have come a long way fromthe simple catalogue oftrees in the Parlement of Foules. Yet, in a sense, we have not come so faras it appears. Those trees,by makingreference to the temporalreality of theiruses, complicated the idea of a timeless garden; theymade it a place which is neither this world nor eternity but something intermediatebetween them. The debate of the birds verified this implication by compromising between the discord of temporal conflictand the perfectharmony of the heavenly music. In a similar way the Canterburypilgrims bring theirtemporal attributesinto a ceremonywhich prefiguresthe celestial pilgrimagebut which also re-evaluatesthe daily lives ofits participants.In both cases, Chaucer remains a poet who, in the words of J.A. W. Bennett,"hovers be- tween two worlds, celestial and terrestrial."'17 As a final exercise, it should be possible to see why an ambivalence toward social transformationsmight manifest itself poetically in the refusalto accept time and timelessness as exclusive contextsfor human life.The linear time ofhistorical change suggests thatno social institutionis permanent,while the hierarchicstructure of feudal society claims, through its analogical relation to the structureof the church,an eternaldispensation. To challenge either one of these conflictingorders in the termsprovided by the other would not, forChaucer, have been a possibility; the one was too immediate to experience, while the other was still too powerfully authoritative.What he could do was to accept the antithesisand to resolve it dialectically ratherthan preferentially.He is not, in this sense, displaying either conservatism or liberalism in his poetic

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This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions statement.He creates an institutionin which both the changeless and the changingtake on new significancein relationto one another throughthe twin perspective of cyclic time and the possibilities of game in an unfamiliarsocial context.The dialectic itselfand theneed for resolution had been stated in the early dream visions. There, however, a problem born of social conflictcould be solved only in termsof privateexperience. The finalstep to be taken was to return the poet's vision to concrete history,to seek a formof resolution in the human communityitself. Chaucer was gesturingin thisdirection in the Parlementwhere "communprofit" is the centralissue. But the fillingout of the full social structureof exchange required a new poetic structure.Chaucer built thatnew formnot out of the earlier genre but out ofthe conventionwithin that genre which he had used to bringsupernatural experience nearestto concretereality. And that convention, in all its deceiving simplicity, was the rhetorical catalogue of types.

FOOTNOTE S

'"Conventionas Structure:The Prologue to the CanterburyTales," in Tradition and Poetic Structure(Denver, 1960), pp. 59-75. 2NLH, 2 (1971), 199-215. 3 All quotationsfrom Chaucer's poems are fromF. N. Robinsoned. The Worksof GeoffreyChaucer (Boston,1957). 4This concept is not unusual in the late Middle Ages. For its use in both philosophicaland politicalcontexts, see ErnstKantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton,1957), esp. Chap. VI. 5 This implicationof cyclic regenerationwas well understoodin the fourteenth centuryand before.Thus, when the Bishop of Paris, with the endorsementof the Archbishopof Canterbury,condemned Averroistand otherAristotelian "errors" in 1277, he included the idea of the eternityof the world as inferredfrom the cyclic regenerationof species. For reasonably succinct treatmentsof these theological issues, see Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophyin the Middle Ages (London, 1955), pp. 181-225; or F. H. Brabant,Time and Eternityin Christian Thought(London, 1937), pp. 45-83. 6 Probablymost penetrating perception of the significanceof the openingpassage in these termsis thatof Arthur W. Hoffman,"Chaucer's Prologueto Pilgrimage:The Two Voices," in Chaucer, Modern Essays in Criticism,ed. Edward Wagenknecht (New York,1959), pp. 30-45. See also RaymondPreston, Chaucer (London, 1952),p. 30. 7Only one similarpoem, Giovanni Sercambi'sNovelle, includes travellersfrom a wide spectrumof contemporary life, and theyare nottale-tellers but merely listeners. 8 Paul A. Olson, "Chaucer's Merchantand January's'hevene in erthe heere,'" ELH, 28 (1961), 203-14. 9 The mostthorough recent treatment of the pilgrimsas social typesis JillMann's Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire (Cambridge,1973). See also Harold F. Brooks, Chaucer's Pilgrims:The ArtisticOrder of the Portraitsin the Prologue (London, 1962).

16 General Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales"

This content downloaded from 150.135.239.97 on Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:29:35 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 10 See F. R. H. DuBoulay,An Age ofAmbition: English Societyin theLate Middle Ages (New York,1970), esp. Chap. 3,4, and 7; SylviaThrupp, The MerchantClass of Medieval London (Ann Arbor,1968); and George Holmes, Europe: Hierarchyand Revolt,1320-1450 (New York,1975), esp. Chap. III. "Thrupp, MerchantClass, p. 14. 12 See the entiretyof Thrupp's sixthchapter, "Trade and Gentility." 13 Thrupp,Merchant Class, pp. 260 ff. 14 For a view of Chaucer's relationto these changes and tensions,see F. R. H. DuBoulay, "The Historical Chaucer," in GeoffreyChaucer, ed. Derek Brewer (Athens,Ohio, 1975), pp. 33-57. 15 RuthNevo makesthis observation and develops itat lengthin "Chaucer: Motive and Mask in the General Prologue," MLR, 58 (1963), 1-9. 16 In this regard,see especially Mann's Chapter4, "The Omission ofthe Victim." 17 Chaucer's Book of Fame (Oxford,1968), p. 82. Donald R. Howard describes the Chaucerian realmof memoryin relatedterms. This is not surprising,since Chaucer calls books the "key of remembrance"and creditsthem repeatedlywith the cyclic renewal of knowledge. See, forexample, the Parlement,11. 22-25 and Howard, The Idea of the CanterburyTales (Berkeley,1976), p. 149.

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