Guide to Week 6:

        Marriage is one of the most common subjects in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.  Because it reoccurred so often, in 1912, George Lyman Kittredge proposed that the entire cycle of tales was unified by a debate about marriage and the proper roles of husband and wife (Kittredge, George Lyman. Modern Philology 8 (1912) 435-67).   No modern critics accept that thesis today, but they do accept as inescapable his basic observation that marriage is the subject of many tales which directly address each other in the "dramatic" reading of the cycle in which the authors of the tales are their assigned tellers and the whole of the CT should be read like "closet drama," a play meant to be read aloud.  Because we are reading the tales as exemplars of Chaucer's art, and as members of genres, we have an opportunity to develop new explanations of their art.

        That being said, the Wife of Bath and the Merchant are two of the most vividly characterized narrators in the CT cycle, and their personal observations on marriage in their prologues seem to be echoed by statements in the tales, themselves, as if each was telling an "exemplum" to illustrate the prologue's "sermon" on the truth about marriage.  The Man of Law's prologue is also quite long, but its topic is not marriage, but rather authorship and propriety.  How does it challenge the assumptions we might develop based on the other two teller-tale pairs?  Could we profitably separate WoBT and MerchT from their prologues and read them independently?  What might we see if we read them as "stand-alone" narratives rather than framed narratives?  In particular, note their characterization, setting, and action as examples of Chaucer's poetic style.

        When we look at "The Weddyng of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle," we encounter a work from a distinctly different kind of author.  "Weddyng" is one among many "Gawain-romances" which appear to have been very popular in the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries.  See Joe Turner's web exhibit for more information about the other Gawain-romances and two major motifs which they exhibit, the "Beheading Game" and the "Wedding."  (He also includes a link to a short annotated bibliography on the subject.)  What differences do we encounter when we shift from "Weddyng" to Chaucer's later adaptation of the motif in "Wife of Bath's Tale"?  How do the protagonists' characters, and their value systems, compare with those in Chaucer's tale?  Because of "Weddyng"'s geographical setting in the west of England, on the Welsh border, this narrative may have some particular reasons for challenging the presumed authority of Arthur's court and the London-centered culture it represents.   Michelle Warren has explored this strain of writing in Arthurian romances written in the previous two centuries in History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain, 1100-1300 (Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 2000): 941.02 W291h.   How do this narrative's setting and its politics compare with those of the Wife of Bath's tale?

        John Lydgate's "Payne and Sorowe of Evyll Maryage" represents a huge group of lyrics and prose pieces which view marriage as a failed institution.  Often included as part of the anti-feminist satires like those in Jankyn's book of wicked wives (III.669-787), these kinds of verse satire apparently was very popular, based on the number of surviving manuscripts in which they occur.  What values do they assume to be normal, and what does that agenda tell us about their authors and intended audiences?  How does the style of Lydgate's poem compare with those by Chaucer and the anonymous author of "Weddyng"?  Note that "Payne," as a stand-alone lyric, can only imply the existence of its narrator, but how would you describe him (surely not her!).  Could the author of "Weddyng" possibly have been a woman?