Reading along with Chaucer

There is something bewitching about reading books from radically different historical periods that are nevertheless startlingly recognisable and familiar. 

Through the personalities, tensions and rivalries within The Canterbury Tales, a reader can excavate similarities and parallels between the different nows and thens of historical periods. 

The Canterbury Tales charts a group of disparate people on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. They decide to take turns telling stories, and the person who tells the best story will be given a free meal on their return to London. 

“There is a diversity of character, a diversity of personality and a diversity of class and social context represented in this book,” says Professor of English, Stephanie Trigg.

In the historical moment, society was in flux, she says. “Things were changing in the world when The Canterbury Tales were written. Old class hierarchies were becoming less stable, and society was witnessing the growth of a new professional class.”

And as the old orders broke down and new shoulders rubbed against each other, different rivalries and tensions appeared. 

“In the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, we can see that the priest may be a bit resentful that his direct superior and employer is a woman. Chaucer shows him snidely trying to undercut the prioress’s authority.”

Despite being in Middle English, these stories have an approachable informal quality, expressing clear frustrations, social aspirations and gentle satire that are recognisable in contemporary conversations.

The story told by the priest is at one level a simple tale – a barnyard fable with talking chickens. But like many medieval narratives, it works by layering other stories and interpretations of those stories. Chaucer constantly shifts between discussions about human and animal behaviour.

A rooster, Chaunticleer, wakes frightened from a bad dream and debates with his pretty wife – also a chicken, Madame Pertelote – about what his dream could mean. Their discussion is studded with conversational footnotes, referencing classical philosophers and their views on the meaning of dreams.

All of this, however, is underscored by the complaint by Chaunticleer that the roosting perch is too narrow for him to effectively have sex with his desirable wife.

To quote Chaucer in Middle English: “Al-be-it that I may nat on you ryde,

For that our perche is maad so narwe, alas!”

“It’s all so wonderfully absurd and hilarious,” Professor Trigg said. “Because they’re having a serious philosophical discussion and their marriage is laid before the audience, but we can’t forget that they’re chickens.”

The collection of stories, though unfinished, is driven by the purpose of a religious pilgrimage and several of the pilgrims are of the clergy. Yet many of the stories have a somewhat robust irreligious streak.

At the end of his writing career, Geoffrey Chaucer published a retraction of the tales referencing the salvation of his soul and the importance of confession: “the salvacioun of my soule:—and graunte me grace of verray penitence, confessioun and satisfaccioun to doon in this present lyf”.

There is some debate in literary circles about whether this was a genuine retraction or something pressed upon him by religious codes of the time. Or possibly even a gesture of a literary celebrity courting a sense of controversy and taboo that would compel further readers: essentially a marketing stunt.

Some illuminated manuscripts following the death of Chaucer frame the text in different ways: some with elaborate marginalia and the scrawls of enthusiastic medieval literature students. 

One manuscript identifies one of the travelling troupe, a doctor, by depicting him riding a horse holding a beaker of urine. 

This book holds many fingerprints beyond Chaucer’s: The Canterbury Tales was unfinished at his death and edited in its current order by people other than Chaucer. 

Sometimes the historical figures and ideological forces between now and then become players in how books are digested and understood by different audiences.

Reading back through history means we must glance back through many layers of accumulated baggage and the dust of different interpretations.