“As just as is a squyre”: The Politics of “Lewed Translacion” in Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale

"As just as is a squyre": The Politics of "Lewed Translacion" in Chaucer's Summoner's Tale Fiona Somerset University of Western Ontario In solving the ptobl,m posed by ThomruSs vemaculat utterance, Th, Summoner's Tale makes use of information and techniques of argument drawn from what Middle English writers often call "clergie"; that is, the academic discourse employed chiefly by clerics with some university education. 1 That much has long been recognized: Pearcy's 1967 article on the tale explained quite thoroughly how calling the problem an "in­ possible" and submitting it to demonstrative proofusing natural science evokes the scholastic tradition of ingenious response to insolubilia-or what appear to be impossible or paradoxical statements-and especially the late-fourteenth-century fashion at Oxford, and at Merton in particu­ lar, for employing concepts from natural science in logical solutions.2 1 All quotations from Chaucer are taken from the paperback edition of Larry D. Ben­ son, gen. ed., The Riverside Chaucer, 3d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); subsequent quotations from The Summoner's Tale will be identified by line number only. The title quotation comes from line 2090.Since mosr ofthe contemporary clerical mate­ rial I will cite has never been published in any form or, if it has, is not widely available, I will give all quotations in the original Latin as well as in English. All translations are my own. For a more extended discussion of attitudes to 'clergie·, see my Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Cambridge U.P., 1998), especially the introduc­ tion, pp. 3-5, 10-16. I am grateful to Robert Hanning for his comments, and to Glend­ ing Olson for his continuing generous willingness to exchange writings and ideas on The Summoner's Tale. Thanks also to the Bodleian Library, to the library of Trinity College Dublin, and to the Durham University Library, for permission to quote from unpub­ lished manuscripts in their possession. 2 Roy J. Pearcy, "Chaucer's "An Inpossible" ("Summoner's Tale" III, 2231)," N&Q, n.s., 14 (1967): 322-25. On late-fourteenth-century argumentation, see further John E. Murdoch, "Subtilitates Anglicanae in Fourteenth-Century Paris: John of Mirecourt and Peter Ceffons," in Madeleine Pelner Cosman and Bruce Chandler, eds., Machaut's World: Science and Art in the Fourteenth Century, Annals of the New York Academy ofSciences, 187 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER But what nobody has yet explained is why and how it matters that in this tale the conventions of clerical argument are not just translated into English, but expertly deployed by lay persons rather than clerics-espe­ cially when that "translation" in status from clerical to lay appears in conjunction with the Friar's failure, and the Squire's contrasting success, at gaining lay patronage.' While the methods by which the problem is posed and solved are thoroughly clerical, they are transferred to a lay setting, to lay speakers, and to lay adjudication. What needs to be exam­ ined is how the kinds of vernacular translation the tale enacts-of learned Latin material to English, of clerical capabilities to the laity, of money and power formerly given to the clergy to the laity-reflect contemporary controversy over just these sorts of loss of clerical prerog­ ative. Why is it feared that translation from Latin to English might entail loss of clerical prerogative, and even of church revenues? Scholars inter­ ested in investigating late-medieval English attitudes toward trans­ lation have commonly consulted the early fifteenth century's sweeping attempt to prohibit translations of every kind through legislation, Arundel's Constitutions implemented in 1409.4 What sort of impact the Constitutions had upon vernacular translation and publication through the fifteenth century is very much open to debate. Regardless of their effects, however, one way to read the Constitutions is as a set of aspirations vol. 314 (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1978), pp. 51-86; and Edith Dudley Sylla, "The Oxford Calrnlarors," in Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History ofLater Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1982; rpt. 1988), pp. 540-63. 'Larry Scanlon has explained that the tale stages a conflict between clerical...