Murdering Fiction: The Case of The Manciple’s Tale

Murdering Fiction: The Case of The Manciple’s Tale Eve Salisbury Western Michigan University From the physical dispute between Alisoun and Jankyn, the litany of spousal homicides in Jankyn’s Book of Wicked Wives, the abuse of children and spouse in the Clerk’s Tale, Constance’s domestic tribulations in the Man of Law’s Tale, the killing of children in the Prioress’s Tale, the Physician’s Tale, the Tale of Melibee, to the Hugolino story in the Monk’s Tale, and even the fabliaux (of the Miller, the Reeve, and the Merchant) where household violence is defused by laughter, the Canterbury Tales is a work strewn with dead and/or mutilated bodies. Included in this catalogue of violent tales, but often neglected in discussions of the meanings of domestic violence in Chaucer’s work, is the Manciple’s Tale, the narrative in which an angry and jealous husband murders his adulterous wife and then silences the talking crow who discloses the infidelity. Though the husband of the tale, Phoebus Apollo, expresses remorse for having murdered his wife, the body of the deceased woman is not mentioned; the narrative focus shifts to Apollo’s curse on the talking bird whose white feathers are forever changed to black and whose power of speech is lost. At this point in the telling the Manciple’s attention turns to the negative effects of thoughtless language use as he recounts what his mother taught him about the kind of indiscreet speech she calls ‘‘janglyng’’; harmful speech acts, and not spousal homicide, is the subject of the tale. The implications of the Manciple’s Tale—that the murder of a wife is something to be glossed over or mitigated—are rendered more unsettling by the next speaker, the Parson, who considers the Manciple’s Tale to be ‘‘fabel’’ and therefore not worthy of further discussion. Fables are not ‘‘truthful’’ narratives, in the Parson’s view, neither to be told nor believed. The Parson ‘‘quits’’ the Manciple’s tale and, seeming to take 309 ................. 10286$ CH11 11-01-10 13:54:30 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER his cue from the Manciple’s mother, begins his homily with a warning to his audience about harmful speech acts, particularly those that command or counsel homicide.1 Certainly a medieval audience would understand the importance of these particular kinds of speech acts given the value that medieval society placed on verbal contracts.2 Soon afterward the Parson begins to describe four kinds of ‘‘manslaughtre ,’’ ending with homicidal acts that revoke the procreative goal of medieval marriage—contraception, onanism, and abortion. Both men and women are warned about the gravity of murdering children in this section of the homily (which the Parson calls a ‘‘myrie tale’’). Yet neither men nor women are warned about the gravity of murdering a spouse. Is Chaucer allowing the Manciple’s Tale and the Parson’s response to raise questions about spousal homicide? Is there an implicit approbation of the murder of an adulterous wife? Or is Chaucer allowing an audience to render judgment on its own, deliberately murdering the fiction, to expose the legal issues of the time? However we read the events of the Manciple’s Tale, the deflection of attention from spousal homicide to other matters of concern, particularly when read in conjunction with the absence of an indignant response from the Parson, render the murderous act significant. When I say ‘‘murdering fiction’’ I mean to call attention to the point at which narrative fiction collapses to reveal the legal realities of everyday life. Every violent moment in the Canterbury Tales, every injury or homicide of an intimate familiar or household member, murders the fiction constructed around that event and exposes the deficiencies of a legal system divided by jurisdiction—secular and ecclesiastical—intended to assure stability, protection, and justice. Chaucer’s knowledge of the laws of his time—his acquaintance with the Inns of Court as well as his personal experiences with litigation—are generally accepted as factual. But also important in any discussion of what Chaucer knew is his experience as justice of the peace, a position he held while he was working on the Canterbury...