A History of English Literature

For all its brilliant particulars, theCanterbury Tales makes us aware of general

issues and typical destinies. Exceptionally a tale reveals the character of its teller, as

with the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner, who have self-explaining Prologues and self-

illustrating tales. Yet even they are not individuals but animated caricatures. Some

tales reveal their tellers; others do not. The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, of a cock and his seven

hens, is told by the one man in a house of women. Each tale can stand alone; rela-

tion to teller signifies less than relation to other tales. The Tales exemplify human

conduct, self-deceiving or saintly, and its animal, rational and spiritual bases. The

whole is a debate and drama of ideas and humours.

Chaucer is an author who makes fun of authority. The tales he himself tells, Sir

Thopas and Melibee, would not have won the supper. ‘Sir Thopas’ is a parody of

popular tail-rhyme romance, full of silly conventions, empty phrases and bad

rhymes.The Host, missing the point, cuts him off with the comment that his

rhyming ‘is not worth a turd’. Chaucer then tells ‘a litel thyng in prose’, the lengthy

moral fable of Melibeus and Prudence. The author, dismissed by his puppet, the

Host, shows him the way to wisdom with many a sentence. Chaucer repositions

himself with the speed of a hummingbird. The detail of the General Prologue does

not lead to social realism; there is no single authorial viewpoint. Chaucer’s Gothic

switches of genre and tone are allowed by his comprehensive conception of life,

physical, social, moral and metaphysical, shown from a variety of viewpoints. As his

final Retractions show, Chaucer’s humanity has a theological dimension.

nThe fifteenth century

Chaucer and Gower were buried outside the City of London, in the churches in

Westminster and Southwark next to which each had lived. The grave of the author

ofPiers Plowman is unknown. The name of the author ofGawainis unknown. It was

64 2 · MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: 1066–1500

‘A good Wif was ther of beside
Bathe’: Chaucer’s Wife of
Bath (woman from near
Bath), an illustration from the
de luxeEllesmere Manuscript
of the Canterbury Tales
(c.1410). She rides astride,
carries a whip, and is looking
for a sixth husband.

Fifteenth-century events and literature

Events Literature

1399–1413 Henry IV 1367–1426 Thomas Hoccleve

?1370–1449 John Lydgate

1413–22 Henry V c.1405 The Castle of Perseveraunce

1415 Victory at Agincourt

1422 Henry VI succeeds as a minor

Deposed 1461 c.1430 Wakefield Play Cycle

1453 Defeat at Castillon ends Hundred

Years War; Turks take Constantinople

1455–85 Wars of the Roses

1461–83 Edward IV c.1465 Mankind(play)

1483 Edward V 1478 William Caxton prints the

Canterbury Tales

1483–5 Richard III 1485 Thomas Malory’s Le Morte

Darthurprinted

1485–1509 Henry VII (Tudor) 1513 Thomas More’s History of

Richard III