274 Chaucer, Geoffrey
In contrast to Griselidis’s suppressed grief,
the potential emptiness of ritualized mourning is
revealed in “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” with the
Wife of Bath following the outward expressions of
grief and ritualized mourning (“As wyves mooten,
for it is usage” [3.589]) but privately rejoicing in
her recovered freedom after having laid to rest her
fourth husband whose “purgatorie” (3.489) on earth
she was. She lusts after one of the pall bearers, who
will become her fifth husband.
As the Wife of Bath is shown to be insincere in
her mourning, in “The Nun’s Priests’s Tale,” Chau-
cer challenges literary conventions of stylized and
ritualized expressions of grief (7.3,331–3,354) with
much bathos. His parody of Geoffrey de Vinsauf ’s
lamentation on the death of Richard I in his hand-
book on the art of writing poetry (Poetria nova) is a
critical comment on the use of the lofty subject for
didactic purposes. Going one step further, Chaucer
uses the high style of his source to elaborate on a
farmyard incident, which, in the end, does not even
lead to the death of its protagonist. Here, as well
as in the examples cited above and, less conspicu-
ously, in other instances, Chaucer challenges socially
and culturally constructed customs of grieving and
mourning.
Annette Kern-Stähler
reliGiOn in The Canterbury Tales
Religion was an integral part of daily life in 14th-
century England. While it may be difficult nowa-
days to gauge precisely the relationship between the
sacred and the secular in this period of a highly var-
ied religious culture, it may safely be claimed that a
religious consciousness suffused all aspects of every-
day life. It was shaped and further disseminated by
ecclesiastical institutions and various forms of both
public and private devotion; by prayers, sermons,
religious plays, devotional treatises, meditations, and
images; and equally by widespread controversy and
debate. References to religion and to religious prac-
tices pervade Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury
Tales. Although in this unfinished work we may
look in vain for the exposition of a sustained and
coherent religious vision, the narrative frame of the
“General Prologue” and most of the individual tales
engage in various ways and on different levels with
contemporary religious issues and problems.
The situation envisaged by the text of the “Gen-
eral Prologue” is the pilgrimage to the shrine of the
martyred Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.
The portrayal of the pilgrims, however, raises doubts
as to whether they have set out on their pilgrimage
“with ful devout corage” (1.22). For their detailed
description, Chaucer used and transformed the con-
ventions of the estates satire, the object of which was
to expose the shortcomings of each of the estates
(professions or ranks). With the notable exception
of the idealized Parson (1.477–528), the ecclesiastics
among the pilgrims are praised for attributes and
characteristics that are generally deemed inappro-
priate for their estate. Thus, it would have seemed
appropriate for the Prioress to feel compassion with
Jesus and his mother rather than, as her portrait in
the “General Prologue” emphasizes, with mice and
lapdogs (1.143–150), and for the Monk to be keen
on praying and studying rather than, as the prologue
has it, on hunting and eating (1.166–205).
Many of the tales and their prologues directly
or indirectly address contemporary religious issues
and problems, such as the question about the
relative value of “feith” and “werkis” in the “Second
Nun’s Prologue” (8.64), and many of them are, in
fact, examples of, or variations on, religious genres,
adapted by Chaucer to his own purposes within the
framework of the tales. Thus, “The Man of Law’s
Tale,” for instance, is a hagiographic romance; “The
Prioress’s Tale” a “miracle of the Virgin,” a story in
which the Virgin Mary miraculously intercedes for
someone who has shown devotion to her; “The Par-
doner’s Tale” is a sermon, the moral lesson of which
is illustrated by an exemplum (short anecdote); “The
Parson’s Tale” is a penitential treatise, including an
account of the Seven Deadly Sins; and “The Sec-
ond Nun’s Tale” is a saint’s life—“the lyf of Seinte
Cecile,” one of the virgin martyrs venerated in medi-
eval England. The saintly virtues of meekness and
patient suffering are also displayed by Custance in
“The Man of Law’s Tale,” Virginia in the Physician’s
Tale and Griselidis in “The Clerk’s Tale.”
Even tales which, like the fabliaux, seem to have
nothing to do with religion engage directly or indi-
rectly with religious issues. Thus, the Reeve and the