From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui

Voices of the Tabard: The Last Tales of the Canterbury Tales

J. Kieran Kealy VOICES OF THE TABARD: THE LAST TALES OF THE "CANTERBURY TALES* Prologue He sits in a corner of the pub watching the sundry company, noting their eccentricities. Soon, hewill agree to become a part ofthis motley assembly's pilgrimage to Canterbury, deciding along the way to provide a chronicle of this journey and, more significantly, of the tales told to pass the time onthe road to Canterbury. And then, curiously perhaps, as this pilgrimage draws to an end,this thick-waisted "popet"will question theultimate validity of this spiritualjourney andthe value ofthe tales that these pilgrims haveprovided, particularly those that are clearly secular innature. Have anytruly been able to providethe "sentence"that his age so desperately craves? Should hisown life, his very profession be reexamined? Recanted? He sits in the corner of the pub watching the sundry company, little realizing that he soon will be questioning his very validity as a secular artist. Hemotions to the barmaid: "One more, for the road." And thus one faces the dilemma that Chaucer's readers and critics have eternally faced whenconfronting his Canterbury Tales: what is one to make of the apparent recantation of a lifetime's work, this retraction? Has Chaucer, in a moment of spiritual enlightenment, discovered the worthlessness of all secular art or is this speaker simply a literary creation-that "elvyssh popet" sitting in the pub? Whoever our speaker, the questions asked are quite serious. Has thisjourneyultimately beena fruitless one? For both pilgrim and reader? More importantly, have the tales told on this pilgrimage served as little more than an elaborate prelude to the examination of conscience orchestrated by the Parson? Has this entire narrative beennothingmorethan adevilishlyseductiveconfessional manual? 113 FROMARABYE TO ENGELOND Yet, before answering such questions, one should recognize that this narrator's retraction is not, in fact, a spontaneous response to the Parson's enticing call for confession. Rather, it is the culmination of a serious examination ofthe secular tradition that pervades the tales that makeup the final moments of this pilgrimage, one that begins with the Second Nun's nihilistic portrait of the follies of man and culminates in the Manciple's repudiation of all tale-telling. The Retraction is not an epiphany, but the culminating moment in the progressive disillusionment that this rather confused observer experiences as the very foundations of his profession are questioned. The last tales provide ajourney to recantation, both for the poet and, potentially, for the reader, onewhichsystematicallyconfronts persistent medieval beliefs regarding where one seeks the harbingers of truth. And one's response to these final tales is drastically influencedby their dramatic interrelationship, particularly by what directly precedes. Thus our response, and more significantly the narrator's response, to the Parson's Tale is a direct result of the "baggage" accumulated in these last moments, in particular, the overridingportrait of a worldincapable of discerningtruth in anything but the most straightforward of sermons. Simply put, our narrator will become intoxicated with doubt, onedrink at a time, wondering finally if he should have ever left the safe confines of the Tabard. But is the reader meant to be similarly inebriated? The Second Nun's Tale Her prologue and tale are not overtly linked to any previous tale. One brief passageinthe GeneralPrologue represents all weinitially knowofher: she is the travelling companion of the Prioress, "Another Nonne" (1:163). And yet she tells one of the very few tales Chaucer does not retract, being among those "legendes of seintes" (X:1088) deemed worthy of being preserved. Perhaps this is so because it demands a re-examination of the overall purpose of this entire pilgrimage, thereby anticipating not just the Parson's Tale, butthe pilgrim-poet's Retractionas well.Sheannouncesthat the time has cometo think of this life and the next in an entirelynew context and to realize how dangerous it is to trust in the secular heroes and heroines that have previously been encountered on this pilgrimage and the transient world they epitomize. The Second Nun's Prologueis quite different from those that introduce earlier tales. In fact, her three-part montage seems disjointed and rather tangential. It begins by discussing the value of "leveful bisynesse" (5) and 114 VOICES OF THE TABARD the deadly dangers ofthat "norice unto vices,""Ydelnesse"(1-2). Unlikethe Nun's Priest, her travelling companion and the teller of the tale that most manuscripts suggest precedes hers, she does not believe that her audience, like...