If the appurtenance of the Prioress’s Tale to the popular narrative tradition of the medieval ‘Miracles of the Virgin’ is fully documented, the tale remains nevetheless one of Chaucer’s most controversial works. The debate does not so much concern its artistic merits, being unanimously acknowledged as a literary masterpiece, as the ethically ambiguous nature of the relation that links the Prioress’s persona as pilgrim-narrator, her characterization especially in the General Prologue, and the content of her tale, often seen as cause of an embarrassment which induced many critics of past generations to postulate and foreground the role of ‘Chaucerian irony’ in this tale. A well-known feature of the typically medieval genre of the ‘Miracles of the Virgin’ is its antiJudaism. The Prioress’s Tale is no exception, as is clearly shown by the popular tradition that provides its basic plot, by the characterization of the Jews as not only Satan’s instruments, but as his active accomplices in the brutally gratuitous murder of the innocent schoolboy devoted to the Virgin and subsequent offensive treatment of his body – an attitude consistently reflected in the tale’s imagery and in its many subtle linguistic and stylistic nuances. Yet, my argument is that seeing the tale’s raison d’être in its otherwise undeniable antiJudaism, as has sometimes been done, is at least as misleading as the attempt to absolve Chaucer by suggesting an historically improbable ideological ‘correctness’ implicit in the tale’s alleged irony. That the Jews are guilty of the heinous crime committed is never in doubt, capital punishment is immediately and indiscriminately inflicted on the members of the community, who are then quickly forgotten: the focus of the narrative is instead the miracle worked by the Virgin, her ‘benygnytee’, and what the narrator aims at is touching the hearts of the audience: her weapon, and Chaucer’s, is pathos. The martyred child-victim, the blackness of his assassination, the rhetoric with which he is associated, all these elements combine efficaciously in view of the desired effect: moving to tears. High pathos, however, does inhabit the Prioress’s Tale, thanks to the figure of the victim’s mother, as a detailed analysis of her role and characterization demonstrates. While the typological perspective eliminates the contradiction inherent in the identification of the schoolboy’s mother cruelly slaughtered by the ‘evil’ Jews, a ‘newe Rachel’, with the Scriptural ‘mother of Israel’, her tragic figure briefly but powerfully dominates the scene during the search for the missing boy. The emotional peak is reached in the mother’s muted lament in the abbey church, at the side of the bier on which the recovered body of her son is laid. The contrast with the frenzied pathos and the rain of tears to which the final miracle of the Virgin moves the abbot and his monks could not be more striking.
Reappraising "The Prioress's Tale": Anti-Judaism, Sentimentality, and High Pathos
GIACCHERINI, ENRICO
2009-01-01
Abstract
If the appurtenance of the Prioress’s Tale to the popular narrative tradition of the medieval ‘Miracles of the Virgin’ is fully documented, the tale remains nevetheless one of Chaucer’s most controversial works. The debate does not so much concern its artistic merits, being unanimously acknowledged as a literary masterpiece, as the ethically ambiguous nature of the relation that links the Prioress’s persona as pilgrim-narrator, her characterization especially in the General Prologue, and the content of her tale, often seen as cause of an embarrassment which induced many critics of past generations to postulate and foreground the role of ‘Chaucerian irony’ in this tale. A well-known feature of the typically medieval genre of the ‘Miracles of the Virgin’ is its antiJudaism. The Prioress’s Tale is no exception, as is clearly shown by the popular tradition that provides its basic plot, by the characterization of the Jews as not only Satan’s instruments, but as his active accomplices in the brutally gratuitous murder of the innocent schoolboy devoted to the Virgin and subsequent offensive treatment of his body – an attitude consistently reflected in the tale’s imagery and in its many subtle linguistic and stylistic nuances. Yet, my argument is that seeing the tale’s raison d’être in its otherwise undeniable antiJudaism, as has sometimes been done, is at least as misleading as the attempt to absolve Chaucer by suggesting an historically improbable ideological ‘correctness’ implicit in the tale’s alleged irony. That the Jews are guilty of the heinous crime committed is never in doubt, capital punishment is immediately and indiscriminately inflicted on the members of the community, who are then quickly forgotten: the focus of the narrative is instead the miracle worked by the Virgin, her ‘benygnytee’, and what the narrator aims at is touching the hearts of the audience: her weapon, and Chaucer’s, is pathos. The martyred child-victim, the blackness of his assassination, the rhetoric with which he is associated, all these elements combine efficaciously in view of the desired effect: moving to tears. High pathos, however, does inhabit the Prioress’s Tale, thanks to the figure of the victim’s mother, as a detailed analysis of her role and characterization demonstrates. While the typological perspective eliminates the contradiction inherent in the identification of the schoolboy’s mother cruelly slaughtered by the ‘evil’ Jews, a ‘newe Rachel’, with the Scriptural ‘mother of Israel’, her tragic figure briefly but powerfully dominates the scene during the search for the missing boy. The emotional peak is reached in the mother’s muted lament in the abbey church, at the side of the bier on which the recovered body of her son is laid. The contrast with the frenzied pathos and the rain of tears to which the final miracle of the Virgin moves the abbot and his monks could not be more striking.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
