The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems — Themes and Context

The Wife of Bath's Prologue as a Performance

The Wife of Bath's Prologue is a sustained monologue that challenges clerical authority on marriage. She cites her five husbands as evidence of experience over authority, declaring "Experience, though noon auctoritee / Were in this world, is right ynogh for me." Her voice is colloquial and combative, mixing biblical quotation with personal anecdote. She describes her "joly body" and her methods for controlling husbands, from accusations to withholding sex. The prologue functions as a self-portrait of a woman who is both a character and a debater, using her own life as a text.

Chaucer's Self-Mockery in Sir Thopas

When the Host asks Chaucer for a tale, he offers "Sir Thopas," a romance in tail-rhyme stanzas that parodies the genre's clichés. The hero is a "child" knight with "sides smale" who pricks over hill and dale, encounters a giant with "heades three," and arms himself with absurd precision: his shield bears a boar's head and carbuncle, his spear is of cypress, his steed dapple gray. The tale is interrupted by the Host, who cries, "Myn eres aken of thy drasty speche!" Chaucer thus mocks his own poetic efforts while demonstrating mastery of the form he ridicules.

The Pardoner's Tale and the Art of the Exemplum

The Pardoner's Tale is a moral exemplum delivered by a corrupt preacher. He begins by boasting of his relics and his skill at extracting money, then tells a story of three rioters who seek Death and find gold instead. Their greed leads them to murder one another, fulfilling the Pardoner's theme: "Radix malorum est Cupiditas." The tale's stark economy—a tavern, a search, a poisoned wine—contrasts with the Pardoner's own hypocrisy, creating a tension between the tale's moral and its teller's character.

The Nun's Priest's Tale and the Mock-Heroic

The Nun's Priest's Tale transforms a barnyard fable into a mock-epic. Chanticleer the rooster dreams of a fox, debates dream interpretation with his wife Pertelote, and is seized by the fox only to escape by trickery. The narrator invokes classical parallels—the fall of Troy, the murder of Caesar—to describe a fox chase, while the rooster's Latin quotations and the widow's simple household create a comic contrast. The tale ends with a moral about keeping one's eyes open, but the priest's final warning against flattery is undercut by the tale's playful tone.

Readers new to Chaucer may find it useful to begin with the General Prologue to meet the pilgrims, then sample a tale that matches their interest: the Knight's for romance, the Miller's for comedy, the Wife of Bath's for debate. The shorter poems included here, such as The House of Fame and Troilus and Cressida, extend Chaucer's range into dream vision and tragedy. The editor's notes and glosses, placed in the margins, help with Middle English vocabulary without interrupting the verse.

In all my years shelving, I’ve noticed how Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, with her hearty insistence on love’s practicalities, finds a quiet echo in the little valentine writer’s manual we keep downstairs. Both speak to the same human ache—the hope of catching affection in words. It’s a modest, persistent thing, that hope. Richardson's New London fashionable gentleman's valentine writer, or, the lover's own book for this year — Key Ideas to Explore merely gives it a neater script.