The Framework of The Canterbury Tales

THE FRAMEWORK OF THE CANTERBURY TALES w. H. CLAWSON FOR the purposes of this article, a framework or framing story is to be understood as a narrative which, however interesting in itself, was composed for the primary purpose of introducing and connecting a series of tales, which are the raison dJetre of the who1e work. Though it is outside my p1an to trace the origin and growth of this literary genre, a few examples may be given.1 In the oriental collections entitled The Thousand and One Nights and The Seven Sages, the stories are told in order to postpone the execution of a condemned person. In the first case, this is done by the device of interrupting each story at a critical point, with a promise to condude it if the execution is put off for a day. In The Seven Sages) a work known in various forms in medieval Europe, a young prince, the son of a Roman emperor, has resisted the amorous advances of his stepmother and has been accused by her of assa.uJt and of plotting his father's death. Because she has put a spell upon him which makes it impossible for him to speak for seven days without losing his life, he is unable to refute the charge; but his seven wise tutors come to his assistance. Each evening the stepmother relates to the emperor a story that rec.alls the wiles of counsellors, and each morning one of the tutors tells a tale illustrating woman's cunning. They thus succeed in putting off the execution from day to day until the period of the spell is completed. When the prince can speak, he convinces the emperor of his own innocence and his stepmother's guilt and she suffers the fate she had planned for him. Both framing storjes gain interest through suspense and the second imposes unity and didactic purpose on the taks it encloses. There are other collections of stories of didactic intention which lack the element of suspense in the framing tale. Among these, The Fables of Bidpai and the Disciplina Clericalis, both of oriental origin, were accessible to medieval English readers. Here, moral precepts are imparted to a pupil by a wise teacher, and are illustrated by a series of tales. A very ingenious example of this type of framing story is to be found in the Confessio Amantis of John Gower, completed in J390, when Chaucer was still at work on The Canterbury Tales. Gower's framework is based on a skiUui combination of two allegori1This article is greatly indebted to Robert A. Pratt and Karl Young, "The Literary Framework of the Canterbury Tales," in W. F. :Bryao and Germaine Dempster, Sourus. tmd Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Chicago, 19-41 ), 1-81. 137 UNJV~RSlTY OF ToRONTO QuARTERLY, vol. XX, no. 2, Jan., 1951 138 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY cal themes, the seven deadly sins and courtly love. The poet makes his petition to Venus, under whose direction he confesses h.is sins to her priest, Genius, and is warned against each sin by a series of tales. Thls schematized allegory is worked out with great precision and gives admirable unity to the poem as a whole, the pleasing effect of which is increased by the neatness of the versification and the unpretending clarity of the style. Chaucer made a somewhat similar use of love-allegory in his Legend of Cupid's Saints, a martyrology of famous classical heroines who died for love. In au introductory vision the task is imposed on him by the god of love as penance for his alleged offence in relating the disloyalty of Criseyde. But there are no links between the stories, and after nine had been written Chaucer gave up the plan and began The Canterbury Tales. We are now to consider the type of frame-story in wh.icb a series of tales is related by a member or members of a social group for purposes of entertainment. Among the many devices employed by Ovid as a setting for the stories of his Metamorphoses there are several examples of stories told by members of a group. At...