Literatura

CHAUCER

First, what do we mean by 'Religion' in Chaucer? That there are religious aspects to Chaucer's fictional world must be clear to any reader. They are not all Christian; Troilus and Criseyde, the Knight's Tale and a number of other tales are set in a pre- christian cosmos, with the old pagan gods of Greece and Rome playing an actively destructive role.

To concentrate on theCanterbury Tales, it is obvious that the journey to Canterbury has a religious dimension at its starting-point, as a pilgrimage of people who are at least nominally Christian towards the tomb of a martyred Archbishop situated inside a church building, where they will perform religious rituals. The way in which this destination remains hidden, virtually unmentioned in the Prologue or the links, suggests adeliberate strategy of concealment on Chaucer's part.

Seven of the pilgrims chosen for lengthy detailed description in the General Prologue are potentially or actually connected with the Church: the Prioress, Monk, Friar, Clerk, Parson, Summoner, Pardoner, as compared with the 14 descriptions of secular figures: the Knight, Squire, Yeoman, Merchant, Man of Law, Franklin, Cook, Shipman, Doctor ofPhysic, Wife of Bath, Ploughman, Miller, Manciple, Reeve.

With the notable exceptions of the Clerk and the Parson, all the Church-people have lives that seem to be more or less far removed from what might be expected in people of their calling; the Clerk is intensely serious at his studies, the Parson is said to be living in true Gospel style. The Prioress has pet dogs she feeds too well,cries over dead mice, and wipes her mouth before she drinks her wine, which may or may not be very serious faults; the Monk has horses for hunting, which must cost a lot to keep, and seems not to pray very often. Others, though, have lives marked by greed, gluttony, and sexual lechery, the Summoner and Pardoner seeming particularly far from the Christian ideals.

Similarly with the lay figures;some, like the Knight and the Squire, the Yeoman, the Man of Law, or the Cook, are not shown as having any particular vices, but only the Ploughman, the Parson's brother, is presented as living a particularly Christian life. Among the others, we find various activities that are not normally considered good, whether the Doctor's love of gold, or the thefts committed by dishonest people such as theReeve, the Miller, or the Shipman, who also seems to be something of a murderous pirate.

Recent studies have referred to 'Estates Satire' and 'Anti- fraternal Satire' as backgrounds to the descriptions in the General Prologue but most readers are struck by the absence of satiric voice or irony on the part of the Narrator. The Narrator of the Canterbury Tales frame (the Pilgrimage setting) isusually termed 'the Pilgrim Chaucer' because it seems clear that he represents a distinct persona from the Chaucer whom we would term the 'author' of the Tales. The setting up of this dichotomy allows critics to detect a silently satiric grin on the author's face as he writes a text marked by frequent application of the word 'worthy' to people who are quite clearly unworthy of such admiration! Thereis little use in modern criticism of the word 'sin'.

This Pilgrim Chaucer describes the people with whom he went to Canterbury with remarkable detachment, agreeing uncritically with the Monk's opinions, using the words 'good' and even 'perfect' about a wide variety of lives: the Shipman is a 'good felawe,' the Doctor a 'verray, parfit praktisour,' the 'good Wif' of Bath is a 'worthy womman.'There is no such word used for the Reeve, but the Summoner is 'a gentil harlot and a kynde, a bettre felawe shoulde men nought fynde.' It is surely safer to say that this way of writing is the very opposite of that normally termed 'satire' and that the exercise of all moral or spiritual judgement is left entirely to the reader, with no knowing winks from the narrator.

All these people are...