| AUTHOR: | Michael Foster | | TITLE: | ECHOES OF COMMUNAL RESPONSE IN THE TALE OF MELIBEE | | SOURCE: | The Chaucer Review 42 no4 409-30 2008 |
For generations the Tale of Melibee was the least popular of the Canterbury Tales. The great Victorian critic W. P. Ker sneeringly called it "a thing incapable of life, under any process of interpretation, a lump of the most inert 'first matter' of mediaeval pedantry."(FN1) In 1909 John William Mackail wrote that Melibee is "enormously long besides being portentously dull";(FN2) fifty-nine years later Trevor Whittock called it "an enormous bore."(FN3) For C. David Benson, Melibee is "dull, lengthy, and somewhat suffocating,"(FN4) while Helen Cooper writes that, although it is "a serious work," it is full of platitudes that "tumble out in an unceasing stream that overwhelms Melibee and audience alike."(FN5) Brian S. Lee tells me that his former professor, Leslie F Casson, warned his students that we ignore the Tale of Melibee at our peril -- a warning which, Lee reports, did not stop Casson's students from subsequently ignoring it.(FN6)
A century of disdain for this "litel tretys" (VII 957),(FN7) which, as many have observed, is not so little, has been recently contested by scholars who observe Chaucer's attention to a complex narrative structure, his deliberate use of proverbs to make the text more memorable, and his adaptation of power struggles, both judicial and domestic, to an issue which his contemporaries would have found relevant.(FN8) Here I hope to demonstrate that Chaucer implicitly emphasizes Melibee's judicial and domestic debates by adding a stylistic layer to the text that invites a communal response of deliberation, argument, and debate. To emphasize this element of Melibee's stylistic construction, I will compare it to the Second Nun's Tale, which ostensibly divides its audience into two groups: the scholarly interpreter-readers who are asked to amend the work on the one hand, and, on the other, the lay hearers who are invited to listen to this saint's life.
While recent attention has revived interest in the lively debate of the Melibee,(FN9) an entirely different group of apologists have claimed the tale is a sort of parody,(FN10) although they have not addressed C. S. Lewis's warning that modern incredulity to sententiousness can probably find no analogue in Chaucer's world.(FN11) More difficult still for a view of the tale as parody is Sharon Hiltz DeLong's plain observation that it "is simply too long to be either a parody or an intentionally dull piece intended as a characterization of its teller."(FN12) To quote Lewis directly: "We must face the fact that Chaucer's audience could listen with gravity and interest to edifying matter which would set a modern audience sleeping or sniggering."(FN13)
It is in this evaluative tradition that Edward E. Foster postulates with all sincerity that in our opprobrium of the tale we might be "merely preserving a Medieval tradition and... Chaucer would have approved."(FN14) He continues to suggest that Melibee might have been written to be leafed through and not to be read in its entirety.(FN15) Foster's bafflement at the thought of anyone reading all of the work is met by Dolores Palomo's skepticism at the thought of it being read aloud to an audience -- although she is, ironically, one of Melibee's few apologists. For her, "it strains credulity to imagine [Chaucer] reading all of [the Tale of Melibee] aloud."(FN16) Foster is in agreement in spirit, although he does concede that "it is possible that the royals or the higher aristocracy had Melibee read to them as they rested or went about their business, but even if such a fanciful scenario occurred, it would still not be 'reading' in any meaningful, attentive sense."(FN17) A curious counter-argument can be found in John Gardner's biography of Chaucer, whom he envisions performing Melibee as "a prank on the courtly audience that had assembled to hear him, expecting, as always, something vivid and delightful."(FN18) It seems difficult for many modern readers to imagine Chaucer's contemporaries hearing Melibee read aloud with pleasure and interest.
The assumption that this tale is a literate work for reading, or for page-turning, as it were, seems to be largely based on the fact that it is a long work of prose that may strike some of us as invariably dull. Melibee would take about two and a half hours to recite to an audience, a fact that has been used as evidence against the possibility of an oral performance(FN19) even though, for Chaucer's contemporaries, this would have been a short sermon.(FN20) In the context of Chaucer's other prose works, this assumption becomes highly suspect. Melibee is approximately the same length as the Treatise on the Astrolabe, which Chaucer addresses to hearers as well as readers.(FN21)
A common critique to the theory of oral performance in the late Middle Ages is that addresses to hearers were conventional by the late fourteenth century and are as much a fiction as the narratives they are connected to, especially in the romances. Thorlac Turville-Petre expresses the pitfalls of taking these references at face value:
listeners and readers... are invited to imagine themselves for the occasion as a noble company sitting in some baronial hall, attending gravely to the reciter.... The 'audience' is created to match the poem, and this audience may be as fictional as the action of the poem itself.(FN22) Chaucer's promise to tell the double sorrow of Troilus "er that I parte fro ye" (Tr I, 5) is certainly worth a bit of skepticism, but there is no nostalgic affectation of a gathering of nobles listening to a romance in Chaucer's address to "every discret persone that redith or herith this litel tretys" in his Treatise on the Astrolabe (Prologue 41), and I cannot see any stylistic purpose in pretending that this scientific textbook will be read aloud.
We can extend this logic to the Parson's Tale, which is eighty-four lines longer than Melibee and addressed to "alle that herkne this litel tretys or rede" (X 1081, emphasis added). The syntax of this phrase is telling; readers appear to be an afterthought, while hearers are given a more syntactically natural position -- as if Chaucer expected his treatise to be read aloud more often than read privately. If he envisioned hearers for this litel tretys, does it strain credulity to assume that he also envisioned hearers for his other litel tretys -- the Tale of Melibee?
Seth Lerer suggests that the literate texture of Melibee is central to its relationship to Thopas, which he believes represents a "romance of orality"; I understand this to mean an inferior, childlike mode of transmission, to which Melibee is a more sophisticated antidote, a work of literateness, the textuality of which is "to be linked to sober understanding, rational discussion, and reflective civic duty."(FN23) I would like to suggest that Melibee itself casts doubt on such a binary opposition because it disregards a schism between oral and literate communication, and it embodies the spirit of publicly performed and interpreted literature; in my view, the style of the Melibee combines with its content -- the debate on revenge versus forgiveness -- to invite a communal response. Joyce Coleman suggests that "medieval readers chose to share their experience of literature because they valued shared experience";(FN24) Melibee, despite its lackluster modern reception, was written for an audience of late-fourteenth-century men and women who would have seen in Melibee's and Prudence's discourse fertile ground for a public debate on justice, vengeance, and Christian forgiveness.
From beginning to end, Melibee is dedicated to citing oral discourse, such as proverbs, sermons, and debates, as well as texts that are themselves mixtures of oral and literate communication, most notably the Bible. Of particular interest are the proverbs, to which Chaucer draws attention in the narrator-pilgrim's introduction to the tale: "I telle somwhat moore/Of proverbes than ye han herd bifoore" (VII 955-56). In Chaucer's era and before, proverbs were seen as bits of wisdom that could be drawn from memory to apply to appropriate circumstances. In medieval universities Latin proverbs were recited by students until they were memorized; then they could be retrieved at the appropriate moment by the student and applied to a context, oral or written, where their contained wisdom was relevant. These Latin proverbs were collected and preserved in text form in long lists, not to be read silently in private, but as a reference for oral recitation. In this context, the proverb encapsulates the complex oral/literate landscape typical of the Middle Ages: often transmitted by speech, proverbs were put in writing to be preserved and to be read aloud amongst a community that could use them as a frame of reference and a point of departure in discussions and debates. Proverbs became a textual genre alongside an oral discourse. Betsy Bowden argues that Melibee can be considered a proverb collection -- a genre of text that had been used in educational settings as a means of training the memory and transmitting wisdom from generation to generation.(FN25) In his presentation of the text, then, Chaucer does not affect a world of pure literate culture removed from Thopas; he evokes a genre both popular and academic that is not limited to a context of erudite literate transmission and reception, but it is not entirely oral, either.
If we examine Chaucer's evocation of proverbs in full, the intersection of oral and literate communication that permeated Chaucer's world becomes apparent:
If that yow thynke I varie as in my speche,
As thus, though that I telle somwhat moore
Of proverbes than ye han herd bifoore
Comprehended in this litel tretys heere,
To enforce with th'effect of my mateere;
And though I nat the same wordes seye
As ye han herd, yet to yow alle I preye
Blameth me nat, for, as in my sentence,
Shul ye nowher fynden difference
Fro the sentence of this tretys lyte
After the which this murye tale I write. (VII 954-64)
The narrator begins by referring to his speech, which he will tell with more proverbs than his audience has heard before. He again apologizes for not saying the same words as they have heard. Then, curiously, he ends by referring to the tale that he has written. Within the fiction of the Canterbury Tales, the narrator's address to a hearing audience makes perfect sense, while his reference to writing does not; like the famous request that readers "Turne over the leef and chese another tale" (I 3177), here we find the fiction of the Canterbury Tales interrupted and the voice of the "narrator" disappearing to expose the voice of Chaucer, addressing his real audience with apology. Thus the "ye" of line 962 refers to Chaucer's real audience, the actual human beings who read, or heard, the Canterbury Tales. Whether the "yow" of line 954 is also Chaucer's real audience can be debated, but it would not be surprising if many of Chaucer's contemporaries identified themselves with that address in retrospect after coming across the "write" at the end of this sentence.
Just as Chaucer's presentation of Melibee brings to mind the oral world of folk wisdom, so too does the treatise's style consistently remind readers of the natural patterns of speech. Chaucer repeatedly employed what Anne Herlyn calls "multiple dialogue introducers," which she defines as the repeated use of a verb (answer, ask, say, etc.) in the introduction of direct speech.(FN26) These occur often in present-day oral storytelling in English, such as: "So he says to her, he says, 'Well,' he says, 'The person at thirty-four backed out.'"(FN27) Multiple dialogue introducers take on two syntactic forms: coordinated (that is, when two different verbs are used) and asyndetic (when the same verb is repeated).(FN28) In Melibee we find both forms:
This Melibeus answerede anon and seyde, "What man," quod he, "sholde of his wepyng stente that hath so greet a cause for to wepe?" (VII 986) "For Senec seith thus: 'That maister,' he seith, 'is good that proveth shrewes.'" (VII 1437) The first instance, which is an example of the coordinated form, is in the narrator's voice, while the second is a quotation from Prudence.
Prudence uses multiple dialogue introducers (MDIs) eleven times; a list of these is provided in Table 1. (For full quotations of all MDIs in the tale, see Appendix 1.) Her use of the form can be considered Chaucer's mimetic representation of speech in the fiction of the tale. Long ago, Margaret Schlauch argued that "the discussion [between Melibee and Prudence] sounds a bit more like a real conversation than it did in the original" by virtue of the characters' heightened use of vocatives, hedging and conversational adverbials;(FN29) I would add that Prudence's use of the MDIs makes the conversation seem more realistic, and emphasizes the colloquial nature of the discourse.
However, the significance of the MDIs is not limited to a mimetic representation of speech within the story. The narrator also uses these forms a total of nineteen times (see Table 1); in three of these instances (at VII 1236-39, 1283-85, and 1735-41), the second dialogue introducer is separated from the first by a significant block of text, while in the vast majority of instances they are separated only by a single word or clause. It is significant that these stylistic features are almost entirely Chaucer's additions. Of the twenty-nine MDIs I have found in the tale, only six are to be found in Chaucer's source text, Renaud de Louens's French translation of Albertano de Brescia's Liber consolationis et consilii (for full quotations of those MDIs added by Chaucer and those found in Louens's text, see the Appendix).(FN30) This leaves twenty-three MDIs -- 79% of the total count -- which are Chaucerian additions. The result of the repeated use of this grammatical structure is a style that Chaucer consciously employed either to affect the style of speech (which is of course in line with the overarching fiction of the Canterbury Tales) or to acclimate the text for public performance, or both.
I believe that Chaucer's motivations in highlighting the conversational nature of the text go deeper still. Although it is sensible and satisfying to say that Melibee's style accommodates future oral performances of the text, Chaucer does not accommodate for the oral mode of textual reception in quite the same way in his other prose works -- even when they are addressed to an audience of hearers. In fact, the frequent use of MDIs in the Tale of Melibee is exceptional to Chaucer's prose style. We do not find it being employed at all in Boece, and I have been able to find only one instance of it in the Parson's Tale, which, like Melibee, adopts many texts to propound a thesis:
I seye that somtyme contricioun delivereth a man fro synne;/of which that David seith, "I seye," quod David (that is to seyn, I purposed fermely) "to shryve me, and thow, Lord, relessedest my synne." (X 308-9) Also, the emphasis on oral communication within the text does not end here. It is almost entirely a dialogue between Melibee and Prudence, giving it a dramatic feel. Although references to books permeate the tale, the verb "say" is used regularly when accompanying the subject "book" or an author's name; I have found a total of 156 such occurrences, listed in Table 1. A typical example, which I have already discussed as an example of an MDI, is at VII 1437: "For Senec seith thus: 'That maister,' he seith, 'is good that proveth shrewes.'" The narrator as well as Prudence, Melibee, and other characters all share this use of the verb, while they use the verbs write and read to refer to texts much more infrequently -- a total of only six times (one instance, at VII 1440, is used in tandem with seith, rendering its connection to purely literate communication tenuous). Three of these are used by Prudence at the end of the tale (starting at VII 1846) in quick succession, in a final attempt to dissuade Melibee from exiling the three "olde foes" (VII 970) who assaulted her and their daughter. Perhaps Prudence affects this change in referential diction as a last-ditch effort to win Melibee over. The narrator suggests that Prudence's "wise informaciouns and techynges" help Melibee to "enclyne to the wil of his wif" (VII 1870-71); the textuality of her wise information and teaching bolster her case, and provide her argument with the authority that affirms its veracity.
It is true that these uses of say in relation to texts reflect the fact that in Chaucer's English this verb can refer to written communication, as it still can in modern English, but I do not think this renders the diction entirely insignificant. Chaucer's consistent choice of the verb say over write emphasizes the intersections of both communication modalities in a way that complements the text's dramatic structure and Chaucer's use of a dialogic style in the voices of Prudence and the narrator. Whether Melibee and Prudence read these books privately or aloud to one another, the Tale of Melibee can be interpreted as a tale in which books become speech in the debate on action versus patience, rendering an oral/literate division between Sir Thopas and Melibee strained.
Quite some time ago, Alan Gaylord suggested that Sir Thopas is mere solaas and the Melibee mere sentence, and the link between the two is the implication that stories must balance delight with didactics.(FN31) C. David Benson goes further to suggest that the Tale of Sir Thopas's and the Tale of Melibee's "literary [that is, stylistic] contrast is extreme and total."(FN32) This idea is also expressed by Tony Davenport, who surely draws upon Gaylord in his recent discussion of the Thopas-Melibee link:
[I]n Sir Thopas Chaucer shows by exaggeration where writing only for 'solas' can lead; escapism without sense is a logical extreme of the avoidance of serious purpose in narrative. Melibee can be seen as the other extreme, 'sentence' without much 'solas.'(FN33) Accordingly, the question Chaucer raises with these two works is, to quote Benson again, "Can a poet delight without instructing or instruct without delight? The answer is held within the tales themselves."(FN34) According to Benson's, Gaylord's, and Davenport's readings, Chaucer represents two ways of using language by telling these two tales: the imaginative and the instructive. The instruction the Melibee provides is not purely from books, as Chaucer reminds us by commenting on his use of proverbial wisdom, and those books themselves do not reflect a world of pure literate thought, since they become speech when Prudence quotes them aloud. Her speeches instruct Chaucer's audience and Melibee, who learns well enough to forgive his foes their trespass. The wisdom of Melibee, like its style and presentation, surpasses a distinction between literate and oral worlds which the text itself belies.
I would like to demonstrate this point further by contrasting the inclusive style of Melibee with the different reception-context Chaucer implies for the Second Nun's Tale. This tale is unique in Chaucer's corpus because it is directed to private readers -- although not to the exclusion of hearers -- who are asked to perfect its canonicity because the mystical Christian ethos of the tale demands an orthodox religious understanding based upon authority and not communal mediation.
Chaucer begins the Second Nun's Prologue by confirming the tale's canonicity; it is presented as a "legende in translacioun" (VIII 25) which has been made in "feithful bisynesse" (VIII 24), unlike the Melibee which, the Chaucer-pilgrim admits, he has freely altered. Although it is never safe to refer to Chaucer's narrative voice as Chaucer the poet, there is firmer ground than usual to identify the narrator of the Prologue to the Second Nun's Tale as Chaucer. In the Invocacio of the tale (VIII 29-84), the narrator calls himself "unworthy sone of Eve" (VIII 62) and he requests that his audience "amende" (VIII 84) and correct his work in a moment bereft of irony or humor.(FN35) This masculine self-identification makes it obvious that this is not the voice of the Second Nun, who, as William Quinn notes, "is never described, she is never even named."(FN36)
This narrative voice also asks for readerly emendations -- a request not only Chaucerian but, in a late-fourteenth-century context, positively authorial. To quote Quinn again: "This T is that of the writer at prayer (78-84).... Except for the incipit's annotation that these stanzas comprise 'The Prologe of the Seconde Nonnes Tale,' the text itself gives no reason to attribute its simple voice to 'another.'"(FN37) The piety of the story is not a literary affectation -- it is a spiritual expression that unites Chaucer with his contemporaries. Since we know that some form of this tale existed as an autonomous hagiography before it was referred to in both versions of the Legend of Good Women (F 426 and G 416), there is reason to believe that the Second Nun's Tale, and the 'Lyf... of Seynt Cecite' before it, were understood by Chaucer's contemporaries as a hagiography of deep piety more than as a characterization of the Second Nun.(FN38)
Audiences must approach the Second Nun's Tale, as a spiritual work, differently than the Melibee, and Chaucer's audience-addresses allow us to identify these different responses:
Yet preye I yow that reden that I write,
Foryeve me that I do no diligence
This ilke storie subtilly to endite,
For bothe have I the wordes and sentence
Of hym that at the seintes reverence
The storie wroot, and folwen hire legende,
And pray yow that ye wole my werk amende. (VIII 78-84)
Our first difficulty is understanding whom Chaucer meant by "yow that redden that I write." As Coleman has observed, Chaucer "often... uses an apparently format-neutral 'read' or else a 'hear' or 'now hearken'" when addressing his audience.(FN39) A well-known example of when read means more than 'to read alone, silently' in Chaucer's texts appears in the second book of Troilus and Criseyde, when Criseyde says to her uncle that "This romaunce is of Thebes that we rede" (II, 100) even though she is not actually reading the text -- one of her handmaidens is, while Criseyde and the other ladies listen to the text being read aloud. For this reason, we cannot say with confidence that this address in the Second Nun's Tale is directed to private readers alone.
Yet it seems that Chaucer singles out those members of his audience who are reading the text privately to perform a specifically scholarly and literate act -- the amending of the failures and errors of his text. The relative pronoun at VIII 78 cleaves his audience into two groups: lay hearers, who are excluded from the act of textual emendation, and the more authoritative silent readers, whose scholarship seems implicit in this address. Because the silent readers have authority which his other audience members lack, they are asked to amend the work -- a text which Chaucer "makes no claim to invent."(FN40) This is not to say that the text is intended solely for these literary-professionals, to use Coleman's term.(FN41) As a rhetorical address, this passage emphasizes the authority of the silent readers who were a part of the larger audience who awaited the tale when Chaucer put pen to parchment. To them Chaucer assigns the task of maintaining his translation's orthodoxy -- a rhetorical stance common to Chaucer and earlier compilers of religious texts.(FN42)
A specific parallel with another Chaucerian text sheds light on both the Second Nun's Tale and the Tale of Melibee. In Chaucer's famous dedication of Troilus and Criseyde (V, 1856-59), he similarly assigns interpretative authority to literate men. Like moral Cower and philosophical Strode, a larger group of similar figures both within Chaucer's era and beyond can claim authority by virtue of their scholarship to correct the failings of the Second Nun's Tale. To say that the tale is addressed exclusively to this group would narrow the text's potential appeal and its social function a bit too much, and such an argument would also force a similar conclusion onto Troilus and Criseyde, which I doubt many believe was written only to be read in private by Gower and Strode or men like them.
One way to argue this further is to examine the style of the Second Nun's Tale. Does Chaucer mix within it oral and literate modalities, as he does in the Tale of Melibee in what I consider a conscious affectation of a conversational style? After all, Chaucer introduces the tale by referring to his written source (VIII 124) and does not use say in reference to books at any time (the verb tell is used once at VIII 360). However, we find the MDI employed six times in the narrative voice of the tale (at VIII 169-72, 294-95, 307-9, 436-37, 462-65, 487-92, quoted in Appendix 2) -- a not insignificant amount for a poem of 434 lines. The style of the Second Nun's Tale is thus as colloquial as that of the Melibee, suggesting that it was not only adapted to the fictional orality within the Canterbury pilgrimage, but conceivably written as much for both modes of textual transmission as were Chaucer's other works.
In Chaucer's and his contemporaries' view, a multitude of differing and unique individual responses is not permissible for a work like the Second Nun's Tale, which must ultimately guide its audience to the unifying truth of God's power and grace. Melibee, on the other hand, is a text about very public social issues -- issues that David Wallace finds to be positively political.(FN43) The de-emphasis on public mediation of the Second Nun's Tale's meaning implicit in Chaucer's address to his readers does not invite the space for discussion and debate in a public forum that I have argued exists in Melibee. We find such a construction of various audience responses and the scene-setting for a lively debate in Troilus and Criseyde, where multifarious and heterogeneous audience-addresses imply various stances on Troilus, Criseyde, and the downfall of their relationship; Paul Strohm's observation that the audience addressed in that work changes throughout to encompass many potential readings of the work(FN44) is indicative not only of the potential fiction of the addresses, as Strohm suggests,(FN45) but also of the powerful capability of Chaucer's socializing strategy; he can include the voices of many unique individuals into his own narration -- even if they have no greater presence than as uncharacterized narratees, and even if some (or all) of them are complete fictions. These voices are parallel to the voices of those contemporaries of Chaucer who are invited to take up the roles he offers in his addresses to argue and to discuss the story during and after its performance, both amongst themselves and, in a circumstance where Chaucer himself read the story aloud, with the author himself. This closely parallels a legal practice that is itself represented in Melibee: the accord, or "loveday," a process in which antagonistic parties confronted one another to agree on an out-of-court settlement,(FN46) particularly in light of Kara Taylor's recent observation that Chaucer's collocations in the tale encouraged a unification of various linguistic communities within England at the time.(FN47)
It is possibly because Melibee is not a narrative that scholars of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries have found it difficult to appreciate, but its implicit warning against heeding hasty advice without thoughtful discussion and debate gives it political, social, and ethical relevance for both community leaders and members of the community itself. Prudence's careful arguments for temperance and forgiveness suggest the need to mediate an immediate thirst for vengeance, and Chaucer's judicious inclusion of MDIs enforces on a stylistic level the need for both Melibee and the tale's audience to pause, consider, and discuss before acting. I do not think it far off the mark to imagine a scenario of lively discussion and debate for the hearers of Melibee -- that lump of medieval pedantry which many Chaucerians have for over a century considered "nat worth a toord" (VII 930).
The liveliness of the exchange of emotions and ideas in Troilus and Criseyde and, I would suggest, in Melibee, finds no parallel in the Second Nun's Tale, which posits an audience of private reader-interpreters temporally and spatially distant from Chaucer as the writer of the work, and also implies a secondary audience of hearers who lack the interpretive authority necessary to correct a saint's life. Hearers are not invited to feel central to the development of an ongoing project of producing a communal voice, nor can they feel that they are part of the story in the same way as Troilus and Criseyde's and Melibee's audiences are invited to feel; instead, they can only see, or hear, the expression of God's power embodied in the miraculous St. Cecilia.
ADDED MATERIAL
Michael Foster University of Nottingham Nottingham, United Kingdom ([email protected])
TABLE 1. Multiple Dialogue Introducers in the Tale of Melibee
MDIs (coordinated Use of say with author's name or Use of write with
and asyndetic) text as subject author's name or
text as subject
Narrator 980 976
986 1045
1001 1047
1011-12
1051-52
1055
1064
1232-33(FN+)
1236-39(FN*)(FN+)
1265-66
1283-84(FN*)(FN+)
1335
1713-14
1735-41(FN*)(FN+)
1735-41(FN*)(FN+)
1779-80(FN+)
1793-94
1808-9
1816-17
1834
Melibee 1057 1463
1059
1060
1113
1264
1466
1541
1542
1550
1704
1775
1777
Prudence 991-92+ 984 contd contd contd 989
1185 995 1185 1455 1634 1440
(mixed with seith)
1437 996 1186 1459 1635 1668
1502-3 997 1189 1473 1638 1846
1509-10 999 1191 1485 1639 1850
1556 1003 1192 1488 1642 1857
1602-3 1053 1194 1489 1643
1621 1054 1196 1496 1651
1639 1067 1197 1497 1653
1660-61 1070 1198 1502(FN*) 1660
1071 1215 1509 1664
1076 1216 1512 1671
1087 1218 1513 1676
1094 1221 1514 1691
1103 1225 1515 1692
1107 1226 1517 1696
1119 1229 1528 1707
1127 1293 1531 1709
1141 1303 1539 1719
1143 1306 1556 1754
1144 1309 1558 1783
1147 1317 1561 1859
1153 1320 1566 1860
1158 1324 1568 1866
1159 1325 1571 1869
1161 1326 1572
1162 1328 1578
1164 1330 1579
1165 1339 1583
1167 1343 1585
1171 1347 1589
1173 1348 1590
1174 1404 1593
1176 1406 1594
1177 1414 1595
1178 1416 1602
1179 1437 1605
1180 1438 1611
1181 1439 1617
1183 1440 1621
1184 1450 1630
Others 1030
1031
1740FOOTNOTES
* = dialogue introducers separated by more than a single word or clause
+ = MDI is found in both Renaud's and Chaucer's versions
A version of this paper was given at the 2006 New Chaucer Society Congress at Fordham University. I would like to thank Joyce Coleman and Thorlac Turville-Petre for their helpful comments on this article.
FOOTNOTES
1. W. P. Ker, "The Poetry of Chaucer," Quarterly Review 180 (1895): 521-48, at 535.
2. John William Mackail, The Springs of Helicon (Condon, 1909), 50.
3. Trevor Whittock, A Reading of the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge, U.K., 1968), 211-12.
4. C. David Benson, Chaucer's Drama of Style (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), 39.
5. Helen Cooper, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1989), 319.
6. Private email correspondence with Brian S. Lee, January 11, 2006.
7. All quotations of Chaucer's texts are from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn. (Boston, 1987).
8. See Betsy Bowden, "Ubiquitous Format? What Ubiquitous Format? Chaucer's Tale of Melibee as a Proverb Collection," Oral Tradition 17 (2002): 169-207; Stephen G. Moore, "Apply Yourself: Learning While Reading the Tale of Melibee," Chaucer Review 38 (2003): 83-97; Kathleen E. Kennedy, "Maintaining Love through Accord in the Tale of Melibee," Chaucer Review 39 (2004): 165-76; and Amanda Walling, "'In Hir Tellyng Difference': Gender, Authority, and Interpretation in the Tale of Melibee," Chaucer Review 40 (2005): 163-81. Two early apologists for the tale are Margaret Schlauch, "The Art of Chaucer's Prose," in D. S. Brewer, ed., Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature (London, 1966): 140-63; and Diane Bornstein, "Chaucer's Tale of Melibee as an Example of the Style Clergial," Chaucer Review 12 (1978): 236-54.
9. See in particular Karla Taylor's discussion of the style of Mel, which, she argues, helps Chaucer "to create a civil society by means of language" ("Social Aesthetics and the Emergence of Civic Discourse from the Shipman's Tale to Melibee," Chaucer Review 39 [2005]: 298-322, at 316). Taylor's analysis effectively demonstrates that Chaucer's use of doublets in the tale allows for "the emergence of a new civic vocabulary in English as the solution to the problems of a fragmented society" (299).
10. Dolores Palomo, "What Chaucer Really Did to Le Livre de Mellibée et Prudence of Renaud de Louens," Philological Quarterly 8 (1974): 304-20; Ralph Elliott, Chaucer's English (London, 1974), 173-74; and John Gardner, The Life and Times of Chaucer (NewYork, 1977; repr. 1999).
11. C. S. Lewis, "What Chaucer Really Did to II Filostrato," Essays and Studies 17 (1932): 56-75, at 64.
12. Sharon Hiltz DeLong, "Explanatory Notes," in The Riverside Chaucer, 924.
13. Lewis, "What Chaucer Really Did," 64.
14. Edward E. Foster, "Has Anyone Here Read Melibee?," Chaucer Review 34 (2000): 398-409, at 398.
15. Foster, "Has Anyone Here Read Melibee)," 403.
16. Palomo, "What Chaucer Really Did," 310.
17. Foster, "Has Anyone Here Read Melibee?" 405.
18. Gardner, Life and Times, 291.
19. Edward Foster, following Mackail, writes that it would take "over two and a half hours" ("Has Anyone Here Read Melibee?" 407); it took me two hours and fourteen minutes to read Mel aloud to myself.
20. Compare, for example, the Egerton Sermon, edited by Anne Hudson in The Works of a Lollard Preacher, EETS O.S. 317 (Oxford, 2001), 1-154, at 138. The preacher apologizes for the length of his sermon ("Now siris be dai is al ydo, and I mai tarie 30u no lenger, and I haue no tyme to make now a recapitulacioun of my sermon. Nepeles I purpose to leue it writun among 30U, and whoso likip mai ouerse it" [2940-41]), but only after it has more than doubled Mel's length. The apology for a sermon's length is a common rhetorical motif -- see H. Leith Spencer, English Preaching in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1993), 92. Spencer also mentions that this motif was met by an audience expectation for brevity (107).
21. "Now wol I preie mekely every discret persone that redith or herith this litel tre-tys" (Astr Pro 41-42).
22. Thorlac Turville-Petre, The Alliterative Revival (Cambridge, U.K., 1977), 38.
23. Seth Lerer, "'Now Holde Youre Mouth': The Romance of Orality in the Thopas-Melibee Section of the Canterbury Tales," in Mark Amodio, ed., Oral Poetics in Middle English Poetry (New York, 1994): 181-205, at 184.
24. Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge, U.K., 1996), 221.
25. "Within Chaucer's sociohistorical context, a proverb collection could function as a vehicle to convey basic literacy, religious instruction, courtly manners, political allegory, political advice, patristic exegesis, and other concepts according to which scholars have analyzed the Tale of Melibee" (Bowden, "Ubiquitous Format," 174). See also Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, N.J., 1953), 57-61; Cameron Louis, "The Concept of the Proverb in Middle English," Proverbium 14 (1997): 173-85; and A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, 2nd edn. (Aldershot, 1988), 9-12.
26. Anne Herlyn, "So He Says to Her, He Says, 'Well,' He Says...: Multiple Dialogue Introducers From a Historical Perspective," in Andreas H. Jucker, Gerd Fritz, and Franz Lebsanft, eds., Historical Dialogue Analysis (Amsterdam, 1999): 313-30, at 313.
27. Nessa Wolfson, CHP: The Conversational Historical Present in American English Narrative (Dordrecht, 1982), 26, taken by Herlyn for the title of her article, "So He Says to Her."
28. Herlyn, "So He Says To Her," 313-17.
29. Schlauch, "The Art of Chaucer's Prose," 155.
30. I am using William Askins's critical edition of Renaud's text in Robert Correale and Mary Hamel, eds., Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, 2 vols. (Cambridge, U.K., 2002-05), 1:321-408.
31. Alan Gaylord, "Sentence and Solaas in Fragment VII of the Canterbury Tales: Harry Bailly as Horseback Editor," PMLA 82 (1967): 226-35.
32. C. David Benson, "Their Telling Difference: Chaucer the Pilgrim and His Two Contrasting Tales," Chaucer Review 18 (1983): 61-76, at 65.
33. Tony Davenport, Medieval Narrative: An Introduction (Oxford, 2004), 256.
34. Benson, "Their Telling Difference," 66.
35. William Quinn notes the futility of the Chaucerian's predisposition to hunt for irony in SAT: "Though I myself have tried, out of habit, to hear the familiarly ironic voice of Chaucer in the Second Nun's tale, I see no reason to doubt that her simply pious voice was once the poet's own as well. The tale's own prologue makes such doubts dubious" (Chaucer's Rehersynges: The Performability of The Legend of Good Women [Washington, D.C., 1994], 215).
36. Quinn, Chaucer's Rehersynges, 216.
37. Quinn, Chaucer's Rehersynges, 216.
38. For the piety of the tale, see Joseph L. Grossi, Jr., "The Unhidden Piety of Chaucer's Seint Cecilie," Chaucer Review 36 (2002): 298-309, who states plainly that "Chaucer too took seriously the religious vision of this work" (299).
39. Coleman, Public Reading, 101.
40. Quinn, Chaucer's Rehersynges, 217.
41. See discussion in Coleman, Public Reading, 88-93.
42. See A.J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 101-3, 190-210.
43. David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford, 1997), 212-46.
44. Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 56-57.
45. Strohm asks, "do these addresses somehow add up to Chaucer's 'real audience'? Not quite. Some of these fictional and implied audiences must be seen as ephemera, in the sense that they exist as temporary ways of orienting discourse or even as products of the discourse itself" (Social Chaucer, 62).
46. See Josephine W Bennett, "The Mediaeval Loveday," Speculum 33 (1958): 351-70. On affinities between Mel and accords, see Ian Rowney, "Arbitration in Gentry Disputes of the Later Middle Ages," History 67 (1982): 367-74, at 370; Kathleen E. Kennedy, "Maintaining Love," 165 -- 76; and William Askins, "The Tale of Melibee and the Crisis at Westminster, November, 1387," Studies in the Age of Chaucer: Proceedings2 (Knoxville, 1987): 103-12. See also Kennedy's bibliography on the topic of accords ("Maintaining Love," 174n4).
47. Taylor, "Social Aesthetics and the Emergence of Civic Discourse," 309-17.
APPENDIX 1
Full Quotations of Multiple Dialogue Introducers in Le Livre de Melibee et Prudence and the Tale of Melibee
I. MDIS ADDED TO THE TALE OF MELIBEE
IN THE NARRATOR'S VOICE
* and whan she saugh hir tyme, she seyde hym in this wise: "Allas, my lord," quod she, "why make ye youreself for to be lyk a fool?" (VII 980)
Pour ce, Prudence se souffri un pou, et quant elle vit son temps, si lui dist ainsi: "Sir, pourquoy vous faites vouus sembler un fol?" (Livre de Mellibee et Prudence 2.1)
* This Melibeus answerde anon and seyde, "What man," quod he, "sholde of his wepyng stente that hath so greet a cause for to wepe?" (VII 986)
Mellibee respondi: "Cui est cil qui se pourroit tenir de plorer en si grant cause deoulour?" (Livre 2.5)
* To thise forseide thynges answerde Melibeus unto his wyf Prudence: "Alle thy wordes," quod he, "been sothe and therto profitable." (VII 1001)
Mellibee respondi a Prudence sa femme ainsi: "Toutes les choses que tu dis sont vrayest profitables." (Livre 2.19)
* A surgien, by licence and assent of swiche as weren wise, up roos and to Melibeus seyde as ye may heere:/"Sire," quod he, "as to us surgiens aperteneth that we do to every wight the beste that we kan." (VII 1011-12)
Lors un cysurgien, du conseil des autres, se leva et dist: "Sire, il appartient a cysurgienque il porte a un chascun proffit et a nul dommage." (Livre 2.22)
* Thanne dame Prudence,... in ful humble wise, whan she saugh hir tyme, seide to hym thise wordes:/"My lord," quod she, "I yow biseche, as hertely as I dar and kan, ne haste yow nat to faste and, for alle gerdons, as yeveth me audience." (VII 1051-52)
Lors Dame Prudence... dist moult doulcement, "Sire, je vous pry que vous ne cous hastez et que vous pour tous dons me donnez espace." (Livre 2.45)
* This Melibee answerde unto his wyf Prudence: "I purpose nat," quod he, "to werke by thy conseil." (VII 1055)
Mellibee respondit a Prudence sa femme: "Je ne propose point user de ton conseil." (Livre 3.1)
* Whanne dame Prudence... hadde herd al that hir housbonde liked for to seye, thanne axed she of hym licence for to speke, and seyde in this wise:/"My lord," quod she, "as to youre firste resoun, certes it may lightly been answered." (VII 1064)
Aprés ce que Dame Prudence... toutes les choses que son mary voult avant traire, siemanda licence de parler et puis dist: "Sire, a la premiere raison que vous m'avez avantise puet on responder." (Livre 4.1)
* To this sentence answered anon dame Prudence, and seyde,/"Examineth," quod she, "youre conseil, and lat us see the whiche of hem han spoken most resonably." (VII 1265-66)
Lors dist Prudence: "Examinons tout ton conseil, et veons lesquelz ont parley plus raisonnablement." (Livre 31.2)
* To this sentence answerde anon Prudence: "Warnestooryng," quod she, "of heighe toures and of grete edifices apperteyneth somtyme to pryde." (VII 1335)
Lors respondi Prudence: "La garnison de tours haultes et de grans ediffices appartient aucunes foiz a orgueil." (Livre 33.1)
* Thanne dame Prudence... seyde,/"I conseille yow," quod she, "aboven alle thynges, that ye make pees bitwene God and yow,/and beth reconsiled unto hym and to his grace." (VII 1713-15)
Lors Dame Prudence... dist ainsi: "Je conseille que vous, devant toutes [choses], faites paix a Dieu et vous reconciliez a lui." (Livre 49.37)
* she was wonderly glad in hire herte and seyde:/"Ther is an old proverbe," quod she, "seith that 'the goodnesse that thou mayst do this day, do it.'" (VII 1793-94)
"L'on dit," dist elle, "ou proverbe: Du bien que puez faire le main, ne attend soir nel'andemain." (Livre 49.50)
* he seyde hem thise wordes:/"It standeth thus," quod Melibee, "and sooth it is, that ye,/causelees and withouten skile and resoun,/han doon grete injuries and wronges." (VII 1808-11)
si dit: "Il est verité que vous, senz cause et senz raison, avez fait grant injure." (Livre 9.53)
* Thanne the wiseste of hem thre answerde for hem alle and seyde,/"Sire," quod he, "we knowen wel that we been unworthy to comen unto the court of so greet a lord and so worthy as ye been." (VII 1816-17)
Lors l'ainsnel et le plus sage des trois respondit pour tous et dist, "Nous ne sommes pasignes de venir a la court de tel homme comme vous estes." (Livre 49.54)
* To which Melibee answerde and seyde, "Certes," quod he, "I thynke and purpose me fully/to desherite hem of al that evere they han and for to putte hem in exil for evere." (VII 1834-35)
"Certes," dist Mellibee, "je les entend a desheriter de tout ce qu'ilz ont et les envoyer ultre mer senz retour." (Livre 49.59)
IN PRUDENCE'S VOICE
* "And Seneca telleth the cause why: 'It may nat be,' seith he, 'that where greet fyr hath longe tyme endured, that ther ne dwelleth som vapour of warmnesse.'" (VII 1185)
"Et la raison conferme Senecques et dit que il ne puet estre que la ou a esté le feu onguement qu'il n'y demeure tousjours aucune vapour." (Livre 20.4)
* "Senec seith thus: 'That maister,' he seith, 'is good that proveth shrewes.'" (VII 1437)
"Car Senecques dit: Celui nuit aus bons qui espargne les mauvais." (Livre 39.3)
* "as seith Seint Peter in his Epistles./'Jhesu Crist,' he seith, 'hath suffred for us and yeven ensample to every man to folwe and sewe hym.'" (VII 1501-2)
"selon Saint Pierre en ses epistres. 'Jhesu Crist,' dit il, 'a souffert pour nous et a donné an chascun exemple de lui ensuivre.'" (Livre 42.6)
* "after that the Apostle seith in his epistle./'The joye of God,' he seith, 'is perdurable' -- that is to seyn, everelastynge." (VII 1509-10)
"[quote omitted] selon ce que l'appostre en l'epistre seconde dit a ceulz de Corinte." Livre 42.8)
* "And therfore seith Pamphilles: 'If a net-herdes doghter,' seith he, 'be riche, she may chesen of a thousand men which she wol take to hir housbonde.'" (VII1556)
"Et pour ce dit Pamphiles: 'Se la fille d'un bovier est riche, elle puer eslire de mil hommes lequel qu'elle veult pour mary.'" (Livre 43.5)
* "And therfore seith Caton: 'Use,' he seith, 'thy richesses that thou has geten/in swich a manere that men have no matiere ne cause to calle thee neither wrecche ne chynche.'" (VII 1602-3)
"Et pour ce dit Cathon: Use des richesses que tu auras acquises en tele maniere que l'one t'appelle point aver ne chetif." (Livre 45.25)
* "Therfore seith Tullius: 'The goodes,' he seith, 'of thyn hous ne sholde nat been hyd ne kept so cloos, but that they myghte been opened by pitee and debonairetee.'" (VII 1621)
"Pour ce dit Tulles: 'Les biens de ton hostel ne doivent pas estre tant enclox que pitié et debonnaireté ne les puissent ouvrir.'" (Livre 45.33)
* "And therfore he seith in another place, 'Do greet diligence,' seith Salomon, 'in kepyng of thy freend and of thy goode name.'" (VII 1639)
"Et pour ce il dit autre part: 'Aies grant diligence de garder ton bon nom et ta bon fame.'" (Livre 45.44)
* "yet he reconforted his litel compaignye, and seyde right in this wise:/'Als lightly,' quod he, 'may oure Lord God Almyghty yeve victorie to a fewe folk as to many folk.'" (VII 1660-61)
"il reconforta sa petite compagnie et dit: 'Aussi legierement puet donner Dieu victoire a pou de gens comme a moult; car la victoire des batailles ne vient pas du grant nombre desgens, mais vient du ciel.'" (Livre 47.9)
II. MDIS IN BOTH TEXTS
IN THE NARRATOR'S VOICE
* This Melibeus, whanne he hadde herd the doctirne of his wyf dame Prudence, answerde in this wyse:/"Dame," quod he, "as yet into this tyme ye han wel and covenably taught me as in general how I shal governe me in the chesynge and in the withholdynge of my conseillours." (VII 1232-33)
Mellibee, quant il ot oÿ les enseingnemens Dame Prudence sa femme, si respondi: "Dame Prudence," dist il, "jus ques a Teure de maintenant, vous m'avez assez enseingnién general comment je me doy porter en conseil prendre et retenir." (Livre 29.18)
* "My lord," quod she, "I biseke yow in al humblesse that ye wol nat wilfully replie agayn my resouns, ne distempre youre herte, thogh I speke thyng that yow displese." (VII 1236)
Lors Dame Prudence respondi: "Sire," dist elle, "je te pry que tu ne repelles point en tonourage se je dy chose qui te desplaise." (Livre 29.18)
* "Lo, lo," quod dame Prudence, "how lightly is every man enclined to his owene desir and to his owene plesaunce!/Certes," quod she, "the wordes of the phisiciens ne sholde nat han been underston-den in thys wise." (VII 1283-84)
"Or veez," dist Prudence, "comment un chascun croit legerement ce qu'il vuelt et ce qu'il esirre. Certes," dist elle, "la parole des phi-ScienS ne doit pas estre ainsi etendue." (Livre 1.2)
* "A, lady," quod they, "ye han shweed unto us the blessynge of swetnesse... Certes," quod they, "we putten oure dede and al oure matere and cause al hoolly in your goode wyl and been redy to obeye to the speche and comandement of my lord Melibee." (VII 1735-42)
"He! Dame Prudence," dirent il, "vous nous avez denoncié en la beneyson de doulceur..." "Certes," dirent il, "nous mettons nostre fait en vostre voulenté et sommes appareilliéen tout et par tout obe"ir au dit et commandement de Monseigneur Mellibee." (Livre 49.41-43)
* Thanne was Prudence right glad and joyeful and seyde:/"Certes, sire," quod she, "ye han wel and goodly answered." (VII 1779-80)
Lors Prudence fist une chiere liee et joyant et dist: "Certes," dist elle, "Vous avez trop bien respondu." (Livre 46.47)
IN PRUDENCE'S VOICE
* "Mesure of wepyng sholde be considered after the loore that techeth us Senek:/'Whan that thy frend is deed,' quod he, 'lat nat thyne eyen to moyste been of teeris, ne to muche drye.'" (VII 991-92)
"Et pour ce l'on doit garder le mesure que Senecques met. 'Quant tu auras,' dist il, 'perdu ton amy, ton oeil ne soit ne secs ne moistes.'" (Livre 2.7)
APPENDIX 2
Full Quotations of Multiple Dialogue Introducers in the Second Nun's Tale
Cecile answered anon-right in this wise:
"If that yow list, the angel shul ye see,
So that ye trowe on Crist and yow baptize.
Gooth forth to Via Apia," quod shee,
"That fro this toun ne stant but miles three,
And to the povre folkes that ther dwelle,
Sey hem right thus, as that I shal yow telle."
(VIII 169-75) And after that she seyde as ye may heere:
"Lo, right so as the love of Crist," quod she,
"Made me thy brotheres wyf, right in that wise
Anon for myn allye heer take I thee,
Syn that thou wolt thyne ydoles despise.
Go with thy brother now, and thee baptise,
And make thee clene, so that thou mowe biholde
The angels face of which thy brother tolde."
(VIII 294-301)Quod tho Tiburce, "woltow me thider lede?
Me thynketh that it were a wonder dede." "Ne menestow nat Urban," quod he tho,
"That is so ofte dampned to be deed,
And woneth in halkes alwey to and fro,
And dar nat ones putte forth his heed?"
(VIII 307-11) And she answerde hym this:
"Youre myght," quod she, "ful litel is to dreede,
For every mortal mannes power nys
But lyk a bladdre ful of wynd, ywys."
(VIII 436-39)At which the hooly blisful faire mayde
Gan for to laughe, and to the juge sayde: "Ojuge, confus in thy nycetee,
Woltow that I reneye innocence,
To make me a wikked wight?" quod shee.
"Lo, he dissymuleth heere in audience;
He stareth, and woodeth in his advertence!"
(VIII 461-67)"Do wey thy booldnesse," seyde Almachius tho,
"And sacrifice to oure goddess er thou go!"
I recche nat what wrong that thou me profre,
For I kan suffre it as a philosophre; "But thilke wronges may I nat endure
That thou spekest of oure goddes heere," quod he.
(VIII 487-92)
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