Free English Literature Essays - A Commentary on Chaucer’s General Prologue, Lines 118-162
Influenced by Norman conquerors and a new ruling class in the early 11th century, the English people were coerced into straying from their Germanic, Anglo-Saxon roots in their adoption of French and Latin vocabulary into everyday conversation. In addition to altering commonplace conversations, the French language affected Middle England’s institutions such as courts, high society, and government. French became the official language of the English court, and even church services were soon held in Norman French. Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400) exemplified the transition from Anglo-Saxon England to the age of Norman influence in his The Canterbury Tales, particularly in the section of its General Prologue entitled “The Prioress’ Portrait.” Bernard Felix examines the French linguistic effect as a means of cultural description in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, while Charles Muscatine’s Medieval Literature, Style, and Culture: Essays examines the literary phenomena of fabliaux in Middle English storytelling.
The use of French vocabulary is the most prevalent facet of the French linguistic influence in the General Prologue. The story of the Chaucerian nun is not described as simply a “none” but the French “prioresse,” a grandiose term for a nun of superior standing in her order (Chaucer 2005, line 118). The diction Chaucer employed reflects the addition of several words in the English language following the Norman advent. Words of French origin such as “beef” and “mutton” were introduced for their already-existing counterparts “cow” and “sheep,” respectively. French words such as the aforementioned were technically used as alternatives to differentiate between functionalities. For example, “beef” was used to connote food, while “cow” was used to refer to the animal in question. The importance of the articulation was highly valued as a mark of civility; practically speaking, there was no other use for using multiple words for a single object. Socially, however, using French words was a sign of education and social status. In the General Prologue, more specifically, the Prioress’ Portrait, the immediate reference of the nun as “prioresse” foreshadows the methods with which Chaucer will call into question the clergywoman’s supposed piety. Chaucer uses French diction and the language itself to accentuate the prioress’ duality. The nun, who smiles in an “unaffected and quiet way” speaks “French elegantly with a Stratford-at-Bow accent, for she doesn’t know the French of Paris”; “the narrator tells us” that “her passion is etiquette,” taken to such an extreme that “she wipes her upper lip so meticulously that no spot of grease is to be seen on her cup after she drinks from it” (Bloom 1999, p. 16). Chaucer’s description of the nun also uses French phrases to describe the nun’s characteristics as “symple and coy” (Chaucer 2005, line 118) and her demeanour as being of “tendre herte” (Chaucer 2005, line 150). Such characteristics are hardly consistent with the personality of clergy who profess to swear an oath of poverty. Rather, the prioress seems more to be a member of the bourgeois, more specifically one whose “passion for etiquette” is consistent with a preoccupation with the life of the socially involved. French courtesy is satirized for shock value, especially in Chaucer’s use of the phrase “holden digne of reverence” (Chaucer 2005, line 141). Huppe writes about a double entendre applied, the first dealing with the idea that “courtly ladies achieve respect for their birth and gentle manners,” the second that “nuns are revered for their holiness” (Huppe 1964, p. 33).
Compromising suggestions such as those involving the clergy border vulgarity, especially in such a spiritually charged society as Chaucerian Middle England. French literature and society gave birth to what Muscatine refers to as fabliau, a somewhat daring tool that addresses taboo topics such as sex and religion in such a light as to reduce the degree of severity to something slightly more than tongue-in-cheek. More specifically, fabliaux were comic parables written using language so obscene that it would not be repeated in public. Though not obscene, Chaucer’s insinuations regarding the prioress paralleled the shock stratagem that would gain him notoriety and posthumous literary acclaim. In his Medieval Literature, Style, and Culture, Muscatine writes that conflicting ideals in narrative “are various, but converge on the general idea that” such views are done so to seek “an effect of shock or parody or satire” (Muscatine 1999, p. 176). The underlying suggestion is that the French fabliau did not necessitate obscenities in order to be communicated effectively. Rather, something as simple as outlandish insinuation was enough employ the literary tool popularised in “The Miller’s Tale.” Muscatine continues, stating “one of the corollaries of this conventional view of fabliau diction is to regard it merely as a literary trait, part of the artistic aims of the authors” (Muscatine 1999, p. 177). The Canterbury Tales were largely a parody of society, but the tongue-in-cheek methods communicated across the fabliau method facilitated acceptance due to French literary and linguistic influences. The phrase avant-garde arose specifically from the French tradition of innovative intelligentsia, without which work such as Chaucer’s may very well have been erstwhile dismissed as heresy. Another factor inhibiting outrage was that the degree and “meaning of fabliau obscenity must depend on, and may even be generated by, its courtly opposite” (Muscatine 1999, p. 177). As the Chaucerian prioress’ foil would have been a lady of worldly possession and stature, the effect was more heavily satirical than one of outrage. Chaucer continues to describe the nun’s social tendencies “summarized in line 132, ‘in curteisie was set ful muchel hir lest; ‘thus the first line of the description sets up an expectation which is in fact not fulfilled the description of a gentlewoman who aspires to live” in a world of “courtesy” rather than that of poverty and piety. The French language is repeated here for satirical purposes, as it was previously with “prioresse”; the French “courtesy” replacing the English curtsy. Had piety been juxtaposed with decadence such as that portrayed in “The Miller’s Tale,” the level of social acceptance would have contrasted sharply. Rather, the trivial yet in-depth characteristics such as the nun’s “nose tretys, hir eyen greye as glas,” (Chaucer 2005, line 152) and her “mouth ful smal, and therto softe and reed” (Chaucer 2005, line 153).
Chaucer’s account of the prioress is “much more detailed than that of [its counterparts]” in the General Prologue, the use of characterization meant “to play her status as a nun against her affinities for worldly status as a lady” (Huppe 1964, p. 33). Part of the reason that the portrait begins with a “description of her delicacy of speech, her well-trained singing, and her delicate table manners” was the suggestion that Chaucer was parodying the growing role of church in state and society (Huppe 1964, p. 33). French society’s permeation into all facets of life affected most notably the nobility, whose day-to-day social functions warranted “delicacy of speech, well-trained singing, and delicate table manners” (Huppe 1964, p. 33). The juxtaposition of piety and worldly possessions is a recurring theme, most starkly presented in lines 158-162 in Chaucer’s General Prologue:
“Of smal coral aboute hire arm she bar
A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene,
And theron heng a brooch of gold ful sheene,
On which ther was first write a crowned a,
And after amor vincit omnia” (Chaucer 2005, lines 158-162).”
Chaucer presents the modest grey garb of a nun with “a brooch of gold ful sheene,” something out of place and perhaps a personal trinket had it not read “amor vincit omnia” or “love of God.” That a gold brooch would become part and parcel of a nun’s habit denotes Chaucer’s chagrin towards the Church as an institution; the nun is not an individual but a representative of her fellow clergymen. Perhaps less concurrent with the fabliau tradition is the suggestion that the Church was not above making human mistakes such as pursuing worldly wealth despite a life ventured on the path to religious and spiritual piety. It may further serve to explain why the commentary is not as scathing as that regarding the Wife of Bath or the Miller. The observations and descriptions Chaucer portrays are gingerly presented, as if Chaucer was deliberately more careful in his choice of words than in other sections of the General Prologue.
After all, none of the physical and personality descriptions of the nun suggest direct pomp or malice. Instead, the negative aspects detracting from the nun’s person are made by comparison. Chaucer does not state that the nun is wrong in wearing a gold brooch, just that it is ornate next to her habit. He does not suggest that she is pompous or snooty, just that she is careful in her habits and presentation. It is as though the prioress is herself unaware that her actions are counterintuitive to the life she leads, suggesting a mild amusement of the likes not warranting a future mea culpa from Chaucer in any shape or form. The influence of French literature and language is reflective of Chaucer’s approach to the nun; it is a literary sleight of hand. Chaucer has stealthily presented the Church as he sees it, just like the French altered Middle England: in taste and in such a way as no one would erstwhile notice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bloom, Harold, Bloom’s Major Poets: Geoffrey Chaucer (Broomall: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999).
Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales (Electronic Text Centre: U of Virginia, 2004). http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-old?id=Cha2Can&images=images/modeng&data=/lv1/Archive/mideng-parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1
Huppe, Bernard Felix, A Reading of the Canterbury Tales (Albany: State U of New York P, 1964).
Muscatine, Charles, Medieval Literature, Style, and Culture: Essays (Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1999).
