Colloquium on The Monk’s Tale: “My lord, the Monk”

Colloquium on The Monk's Tale* "My lord, the Monk" Stephen Knight Cardiff University TRlHSTICALLY, Tun GENERAL PROLOGUE'S Jcscciption of, pilgrim will suggest some key feature of that pilgrim's Tale. That this is obscure in some cases (the Physician, the Merchant) and oblique in others (the Clerk, the Franklin) does not destroy that notional connec­ tion, dear to expositors. The Monk has appeared as one of the obscure cases, the thrust of his Tale seeming to have little relation to what's usually described as the ironic and character-revealing motifs of the General Prologue descrip­ tion-gluttony, hunting, and, perhaps, sexuality. In spite of some her­ meneutic gymnastics to link some of these features with the series of stoic tragedies of the Tale, 1 in the Monk's case the notion of a General Prologue-Tale link has seemed little more productive than in the zero case of the Nun's Priest. This view, however, rests on a double misreading. First, the actual dynamic link between The General Prologue and a given Tale is in most cases concealed: an Agatha Christie-like distraction maneuver leads readers to overlook at first what will turn out to be the mainspring of the Tale-the Wife's underlying feminist seriousness; the Franklin's conservative arrivisme; the self-indulgence of the Prioress's sentimental- *Editor's note: This colloquium is based on a panel at the Eleventh Congress of the New Chaucer Society, July 17-20, Paris in 1998. Each of the panelists has prepared longer versions of his or her remarks. Helen Cooper and L. 0. Aranye Fradenburg, both of whom were in the audience and spoke during the question period, have prepared re­ sponses. 1 See, for example, Jane Dick Zatta, "Chaucer's Monk: A Mighty Hunter before the Lord," ChauR 29 (1994): 111-33. 381 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER ity. So we should be looking in the General Prologue's description of the Monk for a relatively concealed motif of tale generation, not the obvious red herring. Second source of misreading: The key motif of the General Prologue­ Tale link may well be visible only in the context of contemporary socio­ cultural assumptions about this pilgrim's proper role and his/her misfit to that structure, late-fourteenth-century knee-jerks called up by a briefly electric verbal probe: the Summoner's autodiabolism (his com­ plexion is the cue); the Knight's class assumption of moral authorization (suggested by compulsive board-beginning); the Reeve's self-gratifying evaluationism (cf. the hairdo); the Maniciple's malign self-protection (hidden in the secrets of his books). Careful attention is needed to both the language representing the Monk-especially in the mouths of other pilgrims-and the contem­ porary sociocultural expectations of a monk against the personal claims of this monk. Such careful attention will reveal that the actual focal con­ cern of the General Prologue description and the Tale is lordship. Language tells all: the Host addresses the Monk at once as "My lord, the Monk" (MkP 1924), just as he called him "sir Monk" after The Knight's Tale (MilP 3117). The motif repeats: "my lord," "maister," "gov­ ernour," and in the conclusion of the headlink "my lord" again (MkP 1929, 1938, 1940, 1963). These are the only social terms used of the Monk by that broad-spectrum social critic the Host; and even the Host's sexualization of the monk figure is itself directed in a lordly direction by its stresses on "every mighty man" and "heires" (MkP 1951, 1957): an inheritance-focused extension of the Monk's procreative power. It is noticeable that this "lordship" motif is not shared by the Knight, who interrupts the Monk and calls him merely "good sire" (ProNPT 2767). Then the Host falls into characteristically hierarchical line, ad­ dressing the Monk as "daun Piers" (line 2792), "daun" being a correct professional term for a notionally learned dominus from a monastery. Where does this idea of "lordship" come from? It is well enough known in The General Prologue that the Monk belongs in the "religious" estate group, just as the Knight belongs to and heads that of the feudal family. Whereas...