The Man of Law's Tale is another instance of the Constance tradition, involving a young maiden who is banished to see multiple times on a rudderless boat. While this is the version of the tale that perhaps most modern readers are familiar, I'm actually more familiar with the Breton Lay Emare. Nonetheless, this tale emphasizes Constance's, well, constancy. Because Constance holds to her faith and puts her trust in God, she is eventually delivered from the hardships imposed by her various mothers-in-law and, in the end, all are reunited happily. Also, mothers-in-law are really, seriously, impossibly mean in this text, possibly highlighting the change in social and political influence that occurs when a new queen enters the mix.
The Wife of Bath:
I can, and have, go on about The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale for hours. This is easily one of my favorite pieces of Middle English literature and is the text I've worked with the most in literature studies. Regardless, the prologue is interesting because of the Wife of Bath herself. She constructs a sexual/marital economy in which she exchanges sex for authority/wealth from her first three husbands, with her bargaining position shifting significantly for the last two husbands. Dame Alice engages with misogynistic rhetoric, appropriating it to her own ends, and depending on the critic she is either a subversive proto-feminist, a comical caricature intentionally misreading theology, or a savvy businesswoman who uses that experience to obtain agency. The tale itself mirrors much of the sentiment from the prologue, involving another version of the Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle. In this text, however, the loathly lady emphasizes a form of gentility based on action rather than birth, aiding in the rehabilitation of the knight's actions (which is itself another change as the knight has committed rape, an ultimate example of poor treatment of women, and this causes the death sentence that only the loathly lady can save him from). I'll hold off any further expansion of this section, as I'd likely get little else done today.
The Friar's Tale:
After the Wife of Bath has concluded her tale, the Friar steps in and specifically takes a stab at the Summoner with his tale. The Host attempts to calm them, but the Friar moves forward regardless. The tale itself involves a summoner, no surprise, that is incredibly corrupt. The summoner carries summons to court that, for bribes of various sort, he overlooks and allows individuals to go free. Before long the summoner of the tale is joined by a fellow who turns out to be a demon from hell. Working together to extract what respective profit they can from innocents, the summoner decides to one-up the demon by extorting goods from an old woman whom he has nothing on. Upset, the old woman damns the summoner to hell, which the demon gladly acts upon. Aside from emphasizing potential corruption in clerical offices, this tale is most interesting for the back and forth quetying that goes on between Friar and Summoner.
The Summoner's Tale:
A direct rebuttal (pun intended) to The Friar's Tale, The Summoner's Tale deals with a friar who schmoozes around, convincing others to donate goods and wealth based on his sermons and all too convenient visions. This friar returns to a sickened Thomas, who has been all too willing to donate before, and tries to push the ill man in to donating towards the building of a new cloister. This friar uses tales himself to try to push Thomas towards donating, but the sick man realizes the hypocrisy at hand and agrees to give the friar a donation that must be equally split among the friar and his brothers: a fart. The tale concludes with a quite funny discussion of how one should go about splitting a fart evenly. In the end, it appears that the Summoner has gotten the best of the exchange.
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